Managing Safety Data: the TOKAI Experience for the Air Navigation Service Providers

Abstract

Socio-technical systems such as the Air Traffic Management (ATM) system have become increasingly complex in the last decades and a call for systematic data analyses is necessary to manage operations and related criticalities. In the context of risk and safety management, it thus become central to allow structured and complete in-depth understanding of safety performance, especially in relation to safety events (accidents, incidents, near-misses). Following relevant international and EU regulations (ICAO Annex 13, EC Directive 2003/42/EC, EU 376/2014, etc.), EUROCONTROL developed the TOKAI (Toolkit for ATM Occurrence Investigation) as a tool to support occurrence investigation and generate a structured repository for safety data management. This paper aims to present the general features of TOKAI, also in line with the legislative context. The paper provides an overview on how incident data from TOKAI may contribute to support an effective data management in aviation, by means of exemplar statistical analysis to support the decision-making at different organizational levels.