The impact of airport characteristics on airport surface accidents and incidents.
BACKGROUND
Airport surface safety and in particular runway and taxiway safety is acknowledged globally as one of aviation's greatest challenges. To improve this key area of aviation safety, it is necessary to identify and understand the causal and contributing factors on safety occurrences. While the contribution of human factors, operations, and procedures has been researched extensively, the impact of the airport and its associated characteristics itself has received little or no attention.


METHODS
This paper introduces a novel methodology for risk and hazard assessment of airport surface operations, and models the relationships between airport characteristics, and (a) the rate of occurrences, (b) the severity of occurrences, and (c) the causal factors underlying occurrences.


RESULTS
The results show for the first time how the characteristics of airports, and in particular its infrastructure and operations, influence the safety of surface operations.
Imperial College London, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Centre for Transport Studies, South Kensington Campus, Skempton Building, SW72AZ London, United Kingdom. Electronic address: s.wilke09@imperial.ac.uk.
Sabine
S
Wilke
Imperial College London, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Centre for Transport Studies, South Kensington Campus, Skempton Building, SW72AZ London, United Kingdom. Electronic address: a.majumdar@imperial.ac.uk.
Arnab
A
Majumdar
Imperial College London, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Centre for Transport Studies, South Kensington Campus, Skempton Building, SW72AZ London, United Kingdom. Electronic address: w.ochieng@imperial.ac.uk.
Washington Y
WY
Ochieng
D000060:Accidents, Aviation / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D059028:Airports / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012307:Risk Factors; D012449:Safety
Airport characteristics; Airport surface safety; Causal factors; Safety data