Focus on the Risk management elements in the Aviation Industry.

 

RISK REGISTER.

 It is highly recommended to create and maintain a Risk Register, containing the relevant risk information for each of the identified scenarios. This risk register should be reviewed regularly as part of the business continuity process. 

RISK ASSESSMENT.

 Risk is commonly defined as a combination (product) of likelihood and impact of an event. This is also the case in a contingency context. In contrast to common (economic) risk assessments, where likelihood and impact are equally weighted, contingency situations have some particularities. Contingency situations, fortunately, have a low occurrence likelihood. Humans are known to have problems dealing probabilistic events, especially with low likelihood events. In addition to these low base rates, the impact variation can be very high, and the impact mechanisms are often not very well understood. For this last group of scenarios, further research is necessary to enable better risk contingency risk assessments. The shortcomings above lead to the application of incorrect probability distributions with subsequent underestimations (Black Swan effect). This is one of the reasons that contingency situations escalate into a crisis. To complicate things further, the (political and public) response to disruptive events is non-linear and depends highly on the visibility of the event. Another difference between common risk assessment and crisis risk assessment is that in the first case the risk is determined to mitigate it. Crisis situations often emerge because the disruptive events were not sufficiently mitigated. This means that for crisis situations, the impact is far more important than the likelihood, because the risk has already materialised. It is important to understand that there is a difference between contingency and crisis risk. The contingency risk is defined by the impact of a given scenario and the occurrence probability of this scenario. The crisis risk is determined by the contingency risk and the risk that the contingency measures are not sufficient.

RISK MITIGATION

Figure 1 summarizes the essential risk management elements. The mitigation steps that need to be taken depends on the acceptability of the risk. Therefore, criteria need to be defined. It should also be understood that any action taken comes with consequences. The effective and efficient mitigation of a contingency or crisis situation requires a full evaluation of the consequences of an intended action. An example is balancing safety and economic consequences of an action. An alternative approach to the “classical” risk mitigation by direct intervention of the competent authority is through the application of the Safety Risk Assessment (SRA) approach that is currently used in the EUROCONTROL Member Statesfor volcanic ash situations. It leaves the decision whether to fly under volcanic ash conditions to the airspace user, based on an SRA performed by the airspace user and approved by the competent authority. This way the authorization remains with the State and the operational decisions are taken by the airspace user.

Read the full ICAO Crisis Management Framework Document.