Ensuring the Safety Sustainability of Large UAS: Learning from the Maintenance Risk Dynamics of USAF MQ-1 Predator Fleet in Last Two Decades

The mishap statistics of large military unmanned aerial systems (UAS) reveal that human errors and organizational flaws pose great threats to their operation safety, especially considering the future application of derived civilian types. Moreover, maintenance accidents due to human factors have reached a significant level, but have received little attention in the existing research. To ensure the safety and sustainability of large UAS, we propose a system dynamics approach to model the maintenance risk mechanisms involving organizational, human, and technical factors, which made a breakthrough in the traditional event-chain static analysis method. Using the United States Air Force (USAF) MQ-1 Predator fleet case, the derived time-domain simulation represented the risk evolution process of the past two decades and verified the rationality of the proposed model. It was identified that the effects of maintainer human factors on the accident rate exceeded those of the technical systems in a long-term view, even though the technical reliability improvements had obvious initial effects on risk reduction. The characteristics of maintainer errors should be considered in system and maintenance procedure design to prevent them in a proactive way. It is also shown that the approach-derived SD model can be developed into a semi-quantitative decision-making support tool for improving the safety of large UAS in a risk-based view of airworthiness.

[1]  Scott A. Shappell,et al.  A HUMAN ERROR APPROACH TO AVIATION ACCIDENT ANALYSIS , 2003 .

[2]  Kevin W Williams,et al.  A Summary of Unmanned Aircraft Accident/Incident Data: Human Factors Implications , 2004 .

[3]  Peter Checkland,et al.  Systems Thinking, Systems Practice , 1981 .

[4]  Lixin Miao,et al.  Evaluating the Effect of Policies and the Development of Charging Infrastructure on Electric Vehicle Diffusion in China , 2018, Sustainability.

[5]  Franck Guarnieri,et al.  A system dynamics model for behavioral analysis of safety conditions in a chemical storage unit , 2013 .

[6]  Yi Lu,et al.  System dynamics modeling of the safety evolution of blended-wing-body subscale demonstrator flight testing , 2016 .

[7]  J Swanson,et al.  Business Dynamics—Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World , 2002, J. Oper. Res. Soc..

[8]  Denver Lopp,et al.  An Integrated Framework for Fostering Human Factor Sustainability and Increased Safety in Aviation Ramp Operations , 2015 .

[9]  R G Coyle,et al.  System Dynamics Modelling: A Practical Approach , 1996 .

[10]  Robert Nullmeyer,et al.  Birds of Prey: Training Solutions to Human Factors Issues , 2007 .

[11]  Thomas R. Rohleder,et al.  Learning from incidents: from normal accidents to high reliability , 2006 .

[12]  Stanley R. Herwitz,et al.  Human Challenges in the Maintenance of Unmanned Aircraft Systems , 2006 .

[13]  Wei Chen,et al.  Human Reliability Analysis for Visual Inspection in Aviation Maintenance by a Bayesian Network Approach , 2014 .

[14]  Xin Zhao,et al.  Dynamics model to simulate water and salt balance of Bosten Lake in Xinjiang, China , 2015, Environmental Earth Sciences.

[15]  N Roberts,et al.  Introduction to Computer Simulation—A System Dynamics Modeling Approach , 1994 .

[16]  Junyi Zhang,et al.  A Hybrid HFACS-BN Model for Analysis of Mongolian Aviation Professionals’ Awareness of Human Factors Related to Aviation Safety , 2018, Sustainability.

[17]  Yi Lu,et al.  Conceptual Modeling of Training and Organizational Risk Dynamics , 2014 .

[18]  Nancy G. Leveson,et al.  A new accident model for engineering safer systems , 2004 .

[19]  Jonathan D. Moizer.  System dynamics modelling of occupational safety : a case study approach , 1999 .

[20]  G. Weinberg.  An Introduction to General Systems Thinking , 1975 .

[21]  Robert T. Nullmeyer,et al.  Training Interventions to Reduce Air Force Predator Mishaps , 2009 .

[22]  Tadao Murata,et al.  Petri nets: Properties, analysis and applications , 1989, Proc. IEEE.

[23]  Reece A. Clothier,et al.  Definition of an airworthiness certification framework for civil unmanned aircraft systems , 2011 .

[24]  Aleš Završnik.  Drones and unmanned aerial systems : legal and social implications for security and surveillance , 2016 .

[25]  Anthony P Tvaryanas,et al.  Human factors in remotely piloted aircraft operations: HFACS analysis of 221 mishaps over 10 years. , 2006, Aviation, space, and environmental medicine.

[26]  Barbara Farbey,et al.  The Evaluation of Management Information Systems: A Dynamic and Holistic Approach , 1994 .

[27]  Ricardo Luiz Fernandes Bella,et al.  Workplace spirituality: Sustainable work experience from a human factors perspective , 2018 .

[28]  Joseph H. Saleh,et al.  Archetypes for organizational safety , 2006 .

[29]  Jiuping Xu,et al.  Post-seismic allocation of medical staff in the Longmen Shan fault area: case study of the Lushan Earthquake , 2015 .

[30]  Javier Campos,et al.  From UML activity diagrams to Stochastic Petri nets: application to software performance engineering , 2004, WOSP '04.

[31]  Roy Kalawsky,et al.  Integration of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) in non-segregated airspace: A complex system of systems problem , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Systems Conference.