A Common Mishap Risk Assessment Matrix for United States Department of Defense Aircraft Systems

摘要

The author's paper for the 21st International System Safety Conference (ISSC) in 2003, "Developing a Common Risk Assessment Matrix for U.S. Army Aviation" (ref. 1) described how the U.S. Army Aviation community developed a common mishap risk assessment matrix for Army aviation systems plus the author's ideas on how this matrix could be further improved. Using this a starting point and combining concepts presented at the 2004 ISSC Risk Assessment Code (RAC) Panel, this paper will show how a common matrix can be developed for all Department of Defense (DOD) aircraft systems. The benefits of such a matrix is that it would both allow the matrix to be tailored to the system in terms of the severity and probability categories used but would also enable uniform assessing, reporting and acceptance of risk. This is especially important with the increasing number of joint-use aircraft systems that are now being acquired for the DOD. This paper will delineate the attributes of a well-designed mishap risk assessment matrix and show how these can be applied to develop a matrix for a family of systems such as DOD aircraft. The paper will also identify barriers to the adoption of such a matrix and how those barriers might be traversed. The principles outlined in this paper should provide insights helpful for any practitioner developing a mishap risk assessment matrix for a specific system, whether that system is in the DOD or not.