Implementation of a Flight Operations Risk Assessment System and Identification of Critical Risk Factors

Abstract

This study presents the implementation of a Flight Operations Risk Assessment System (FORAS) for an airline company, as well as a decision support tool for identifying the factors that critically determine the risk of a flight. The FORAS risk model is a hierarchical tree structure that breaks down the concerned operation risk to subcomponents and risk factors. The relation between a risk and its subcomponents is described by a fuzzy inference system. The use of fuzzy inference systems enables the quantification of qualitative risk assessments by domain experts. The inference of the operation risk is obtained through approximate reasoning. Algorithms are developed to identify critical risk factors based on the concept of the sensitivity of a risk factor and a heuristic search. Experiments based on practical data are conducted to evaluate the validation and performance of the FORAS model.