Abstract
This paper introduces an agent-based approach to analyze the dynamics of accidents and incidents in aviation. The approach makes use of a number of elements, including formalization of a real world scenario, agent-based simulation of variations of the scenario, and formal verification of dynamic properties against the (empirical and simulated) scenarios. The scenario formalization part enables incident reconstruction and formal analysis of it. The simulation part enables the analyst to explore various hypothetical scenarios under different circumstances, with an emphasis on error related to human factors. The formal verification part enables the analyst to identify scenarios involving potential hazards, and to relate those hazards (via so-called interlevel relations) to inadequate behavior on the level of individual agents. The approach is illustrated by means of a case study on a runway incursion incident, and a number of advantages with respect to the current state-of-the-art are discussed.
Parts of this article appeared in the Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth International Conference on Industrial, Engineering and Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems (IEA/AIE’12) and in the Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (ICAART’13).
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Notes
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Possible causes that might be relevant include failure of technical systems, miscommunication, fatigue, high or low workload (restricted Situation Awareness or decreased vigilance), strong positive or negative emotions, power influences, (dis)trust in colleagues or computer systems, little experience, negligence of the existing procedures, organisational management etc.
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This misinterpretation might be explained by the fact that the pilot of the Hercules got used to the routine procedure of taxiing from the same military parking place at this airport and perhaps also of taking off from the same runway. And in many past cases, the line up procedure was often immediately followed by taking off, as permissions for lining up and taking off were sometimes given simultaneously.
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Many of the properties given in this section contain some parameters d and e. These should be seen as constants, of which the value can be filled in by the modeller.
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Acknowledgements
This work was performed under the auspices of the SESAR WP-E research network ComplexWorld. It is co-financed by Eurocontrol on behalf of the SESAR Joint Undertaking. The authors are grateful to the retired airline pilot who participated in the interview for his useful input on the case study, and to Jan Treur for a number of fruitful discussions.
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Bosse, T., Mogles, N.M. (2014). An Agent-Based Approach for Accident Analysis in Safety Critical Domains: A Case Study on a Runway Incursion Incident. In: Nguyen, N., Kowalczyk, R., Fred, A., Joaquim, F. (eds) Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence XVII. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8790. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44994-3_4
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