Adoption of a Bayesian Belief Network for the System Safety Assessment of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems

The objective of this work is to provide a systematic means of accounting for the various uncertainties inherent to any System Safety Assessment (SSA) process. The paper first defines the system safety compliance process and its modification to account for uncertainty. The SSA process, its various outputs, and associated uncertainties are defined and then applied to a generic RPAS. A Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) is adopted that facilitates a more comprehensive treatment of the uncertainty in each of the outputs of a typical SSA process. A case study of a generic RPAS is used to illustrate the features of the new approach. The adoption of the Proposed SSA approach would allow for the high uncertainty associated with the safety assessment of novel or complex aviation systems, such as RPAS, to be taken into consideration. Such an approach would enable the risk-based regulation of the sector.
Source: Safety Science - Category: Occupational Health Source Type: research