The Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) is holding focus groups this month as part of a multi-year study concerning aviation safety data collection and processing systems in Asia-Pacific and Pan-America. Five Global Safety Information Project (GSIP) workshops took place in Asia-Pacific earlier this month, while Pan-American focus groups are scheduled for Mexico City on July 20 and 21 and Panama City on July 23 and 24.
GSIP is a first-of-its-kind effort that seeks information pertaining to safety data collection and processing from aviation industry stakeholders within the key regions. “It represents an initial strategic attempt to apply the best practices of knowledge management on the critical challenges of flight safety data,” said FSF technical vice president Mark Millam. "Current efforts, such as this month’s focus groups, are part of a preliminary discovery phase. They can serve as the building blocks for a future system in which all data pertinent to flight safety, regardless of the geographic location for collection, can be collated with similar types of information and formatted into useful intelligence.”
The key outcome from the focus groups will be to identify how many entities collect safety data, how the data is collected and processed and how the results of that data collection and processing are applied to promote aviation safety.
The collection and analysis of safety information is a key component of the U.S. FAA and the ICAO global aviation safety plan. Funded through an FAA cooperative agreement, GSIP seeks to establish what types of safety information and data are captured by each of the key stakeholders within the two study regions and how this is managed to enhance aviation safety. Project activities will include the development of a globally focused toolkit to be used by states to develop and implement voluntary safety reporting programs that include protections against punitive action by regulatory agencies and/or employers.