Zoekresultaten

Measuring safety in aviation

As part of their SMS, aviation service providers are required to develop and maintain the means to verify the safety performance of their organisation and to validate the effectiveness of safety risk controls. Furthermore, service providers must verify the safety performance of their organisation with reference to the safety performance indicators and safety performance targets of the SMS in support of their organisation’s safety objectives. However, SMEs lack sufficient data to set appropriate safety alerts and targets, or to monitor their performance, and no other objective criteria currently exist to measure the safety of their operations. The Aviation Academy of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences therefore took the initiative to develop alternative safety performance metrics. Based on a review of the scientific literature and a survey of existing safety metrics, we proposed several alternative safety metrics. After a review by industry and academia, we developed two alternative metrics into tools to help aviation organisations verify the safety performance of their organisations.The AVAV-SMS tool measures three areas within an organisation’s Safety Management System:• Institutionalisation (design and implementation along with time and internal/external process dependencies).• Capability (the extent to which managers have the capability to implement the SMS).• Effectiveness (the extent to which the SMS deliverables add value to the daily tasks of employees).The tool is scalable to the size and complexity of the organisation, which also makes it useful for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The AVAS-SCP tool also measures three areas in the organisation’s safety culture prerequisites to foster a positive safety culture:• Organisational plans (whether the company has designed/documented each of the safety cultureprerequisites).• Implementation (the extent to which the prerequisites are realised by the managers/supervisors acrossvarious organisational levels).• Perception (the degree to which frontline employees perceive the effects of managers’ actions relatedto safety culture).We field-tested these tools, demonstrating that they have adequate sensitivity to capture gaps between Work-as-Imagined (WaI) and Work-as-Done (WaD) across organisations. Both tools are therefore useful to organisations that want to self-assess their SMS and safety culture prerequisite levels and proceed to comparisons among various functions and levels and/or over time. Our field testing and observations during the turn-around processes of a regional airline confirm that significant differences exist between WaI and WaD. Although these differences may not automatically be detrimental to safety, gaining insight into them is clearly necessary to manage safety. We conceptually developed safety metrics based on the effectiveness of risk controls. However, these could not be fully field-tested within the scope of this research project. We recommend a continuation of research in this direction. We also explored safety metrics based on the scarcity of resources and system complexity. Again, more research is required here to determine whether these provide viable solutions.

Incidence and risk factors of medial tibial stress syndrome

SIM-OPT in the Loop: Algorithmic Framework for Solving Airport Capacity Problems

The following paper presents an innovative approach for dealing with complex capacity problems in aviation. We introduce a sliding window framework composed by an optimization method with a simulation component. By applying this framework in diverse problems that are dependent on time it is possible to find feasible and close-to-reality solutions in shorter time than the ones that could be achieved by evaluating the problem in the complete time-horizon. The framework can be applied to solve diverse problems in aviation or similar industries. We exemplify the approach with a model of Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport in France.

Afterword: Propositions on the Organizational Form

The quest of organization haunts us. If anarchists were once said to defy authority, nowadays we defy organization. Structures are perceived to hold us back and pin us down with the iron cage of identity. The solidified social limits our freedom with its demand of never-ending “engagement.” How desperate is it to live your life as an insulated rebel without a cause? Instead, we should ask, what is pure organization? Is there a new core that we could define and design? What’s commitment outside of today’s technosocial conventions? Are there bonds that create ties, unhinged from procedure, unfettered by bureaucracy? Is there a form of conspiracy that operates without all the tiresome preparations? Mutual aid and local self-organization come to mind, but what if we’re forced to pursue organization of the unorganizables? Does a self-evident General Will exist that does not need to be discussed and exhaustively questioned? Having arrived at this point, we can clearly see the romantic undertone of the Critique of Organization. What’s a lean revolution, an effortless regime change? Can we presuppose a hive mind that performs like an automaton? Humans, coming together, create the Event, simply because of an inner urge to experience relations without guarantees.

Global China Insights

Journal: doing business with China

Observing Taxi Behaviour at Charging Stations and Taxi Stands Using Image Recognition

City authorities want to know how to match the charging infrastructures for electric vehicles with the demand. Using camera recognition algorithms from artificial intelligence we investigated the behavior of taxis at a charging stations and a taxi stand.