The development of a more risk-sensitive and flexible airport safety area strategy: Part I. The development of an improved accident frequency model

This two-part paper presents the development of an improved airport risk assessmentmethodology aimed at assessing risks related to aircraft accidents at and in the vicinityof airports and managing Airport Safety Areas (ASAs) as a risk mitigation measure.The improved methodology is more quantitative, risk-sensitive, flexible andtransparent than standard risk assessment approaches. As such, it contributes to theimplementation of Safety Management Systems at airports, as stipulated by theInternational Civil Aviation Organisation.The first part of the paper presents the methodological advances made in thedevelopment of accident frequency models; namely the building of a singlecomprehensive database of all relevant accident types, the collection and use ofnormal operations data in quantifying the criticality of a series of risk factors, andmodelling accident frequency using multivariate logistic regression. The resultingmodels have better goodness-of-fit, sensitivity and specificity than standard riskassessment methodologies.