An Absolute-Relative Risk Assessment Methodology Approach to Current Safety Critical Systems and its Application to the ADS-B based Air Traffic Control System

Abstract

This work presents a risk assessment methodology, preliminary proposed in [1], which is the fusion of the "absolute" and the "relative" risk assessment methods adopted by the International Civil Aviation Organization. The proposed methodology uses the Fluid Stochastic Petri Net (FSPN) as modeling formalism, and compares the safety metrics estimated from the simulation of both the proposed and the legacy system models. It was applied to assess the safety properties of a new air traffic surveillance concept, named "automatic dependent surveillance - broadcasting" (ADS-B). As conclusions, the proposed methodology assured to assess the safety properties of systems based on the current safety critical system paradigm - especially concerning the air transportation system. Besides, the FSPN formalism provided important modeling capabilities and discrete event simulation allowing estimating the desired safety metrics. Finally, the ADS-B (proposed system) has significantly reduced the risks of separation losses between aircrafts if compared to the usual surveillance radar systems (legacy system) in air traffic control (ATC) environment.