UK Research and Innovation looks for new ‘total system safety case’ in Future Flight study

UK Research and Inno­va­tion (UKRI) is seek­ing pro­pos­als for a new total sys­tem safe­ty case for new forms of air trans­porta­tion, as part of its Future Flight Chal­lenge.

Up to £100,000 has been reserved for the project, which aims to ‘devel­op a nov­el avi­a­tion sys­tem capa­ble of safe­ly oper­at­ing nov­el mod­els of air trans­porta­tion incor­po­rat­ing drones, urban/ rur­al air mobil­i­ty and sub-region­al all elec­tric air­craft’ — with all hav­ing var­i­ous degrees of auton­o­my.

UKRI added it also hopes that his activ­i­ty can be led a con­sor­tium of UK research bod­ies. It is expect­ed that sev­er­al organ­i­sa­tions will be con­sult­ed includ­ing oth­er uni­ver­si­ties, the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty and any appro­pri­ate pri­vate com­pa­nies. The Future Flight Chal­lenge Advi­so­ry Group will pro­vide input to the study as it evolves.

The dead­line for sub­mit­ting pro­pos­als is Fri­day, 29th May, with the con­tract due to start on 3rd July and fin­ish on 16th Decem­ber.

In the invi­ta­tion to quote doc­u­ment, it says: “The avi­a­tion sec­tor has a long his­to­ry of oper­at­ing a high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed safe sys­tem, which
has evolved incre­men­tal­ly over 100 years.

“Safe­ty touch­es every ele­ment of the avi­a­tion sys­tem and yet a glob­al­ly doc­u­ment­ed approach of the whole sys­tem is not known to exist. To help the chal­lenge team and the broad­er sys­tem there is a need to con­sid­er a total sys­tem safe­ty case.”

The Future Flight Chal­lenge Team are seek­ing the ser­vices of an organ­i­sa­tion or con­sor­tium of organ­i­sa­tions (busi­ness or research based) to look at the total sys­tem avi­a­tion safe­ty case includ­ing:

• Air­craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion
• Flight oper­a­tions
• Air Traf­fic Man­age­ment includ­ing con­trolled and uncon­trolled air­space
• Human fac­tors
• Degrees of sys­tem redun­dan­cy
• Main­te­nance

The doc­u­ment adds: “There is a crit­i­cal need to col­late the cur­rent under­stand­ing of the basis of avi­a­tion sys­tem safe­ty, high­light the poten­tial changes under a Future Flight vision and iden­ti­fy key safe­ty require­ments and com­po­nents of the new sys­tem.

“With­out such a study, it is con­ceiv­able that all the dif­fer­ent ele­ments of the new avi­a­tion sys­tem could be devel­oped and qual­i­fied in iso­la­tion with­out an under­stand­ing of whether the whole sys­tem itself is ten­able.

“To date, it is not known of any oth­er work tak­ing place on such a broad basis. It is also not believed that any one organ­i­sa­tion has the expe­ri­ence and exper­tise to con­duct this activ­i­ty alone.

“Research pub­lished such as Uber Ele­vate or Roland Berger’s Air­craft Elec­tri­cal Propul­sion focus on the chal­lenges of tech­nol­o­gy rather than the whole sys­tem.”

The Future Flight Team is exe­cut­ing addi­tion­al areas of study in two oth­er areas; the poten­tial mar­kets and eco­nom­ics of the chal­lenge and sec­ond­ly the social eco­nom­ics of the chal­lenge.

The third area iden­ti­fied was a greater under­stand­ing of the avi­a­tion wide safe­ty case. The sec­ond phase launched on 11th May, with con­tracts antic­i­pat­ed to begin work in the Autumn of 2020.