The Rhetorical Art of Risk Assessment: Lessons from Risk Management in Rural and Tribal Communities

Risk assessment, mitigation, and communication rely on data from multiple sources to form a complete understanding of hazards and how to manage them. Experts can use these data to make informed decisions about the nature and extent of risks and inform the public to protect health, the environment, and economic welfare. However, in an effort to objectively make decisions, technical experts and policymakers increasingly rely on quantitative data as the most important determiner of risk, which can alienate the public, limit risk understanding, and delay or miss obvious signals of impending catastrophe. I examine several cases based on my experiences practicing and researching traffic safety, public safety, and technical and professional communication (TPC). The cases include a look at the impact of limited quantitative data in addressing motor vehicle traffic injuries and death in American Indian and rural communities; the challenge of collecting accurate data by first responders and firefighters to better understand and respond to health and physical hazards; and a recent history of failures to prevent airline and aerospace disasters due to an overemphasis on quantifiable data and devaluation of certain kinds of expert knowledge. The results of this study call attention to the weaknesses resulting from a quantitative imperative in risk management and a proposal for renewed focus on risk assessment using rhetorical practices and qualitative data readily available from expert and non-expert perspectives

lessons from Brazilian air disasters

Purpose: The focus of this study was to analyze crisis management in a context of high-reliability organizations (HRO) evidenced in two cases of Brazilian air disasters. Aspects of human and technological natures were examined, addressing the complex sociotechnical system. Design/methodology/approach: This in-depth case study addressed the two most serious air disasters on Brazilian territory. The first case involved a midair collision between Gol Flight 1907 and the Legacy jet. In the second case, TAM flight 3054 had difficulty braking when landing at the airport and crashed into a building. Data were collected from official disaster documents. Findings: The results revealed that the management and operational activities aimed to maintain the necessary conditions that prioritize a high level of reliability. High reliability mainly involves concern over failure, reluctance to accept simplified interpretations, sensitivity to operations, commitment to resilience and detailed structure specifications. Practical implications: The implications are based on alerting highly reliable organizations, emphasizing the focus on managing more reliably, resiliently and conscientiously. Changes will be required in the operations of organizations seeking to learn to manage unexpected events and respond quickly to continually improve the responsiveness of their services. Originality/value: In the perspective of an intrinsic case study for crisis management in a context of HRO and disaster risk management, the originality of this study lies in its examination of the paradoxical nature of control within the systems of dangerous operations in complex organizations, as well as their contradictions in a high-reliability system.authorsversionpublishe

Aviation Economics: Safety, Monopsony, and Small Sample Inference

This dissertation consists of three essays on aviation. The first chapter investigates the relationship between competition and airline safety. The U.S. airline industry transports almost a billion passengers a year. Accidents still cause much apprehension and angst among the public; the two 737 Max crashes are the latest examples. Despite massive improvements in safety over the last decades which are largely due to technological improvements, there is still a lack of research done on the effect of market conditions. We provide a simple theoretical model to explain the relationship between safety and competition. Using data from 1995 to 2018, we employ a negative binomial regression to evaluate the impact of competition through the Inverse Herfindahl Hirschman Index, Concentration Ratio 4 and 8, on injury outcome of passengers involved in an airline accident. Since accidents are costly both directly and indirectly through brand image deterioration, a competitive market may incentive airlines to reduce risks of accidents. Meanwhile, since safety is unobserved by passengers, under a highly competitive environment where profit margins are thinner, airlines cut costs, some of which are related to safety. Our result suggests that a less competitive industry has a positive impact on safety, suggesting that excess profits are in part reinvested into safety measures. The second chapter tests the hypothesis that monopsony power is an important determinant of wages and employment in the U.S. pilot labor market. We estimate the labor supply curve of the U.S. airline industry using firm-level employment and accident data from 1995 to 2018. Utilizing a labor demand instrument, the prevalence of aircraft accidents, allows us to directly measure monopsony power. We also investigate the effects of competition, as measured by the Inverse Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, on the labor supply elasticity. We estimate a labor supply elasticity of 2.56, indicating that airlines have substantial monopsony power in pilot hiring, resulting in a labor shortage and wages 28.11% below the marginal revenue products. We also find that as market competition rises, airlines slightly lose market power in hiring: wages increase as competition increases. The source of monopsony power lies elsewhere, mostly in the training and career structure, which we address and provide policy recommendations. The third chapter proposes a new method to calculate the p-values of a treatment variable in a cross-sectional small sample. Causal evaluation is becoming increasingly popular in industry and government. In small sample scenarios inference is more difficult. This often occur for several reasons such as budget constraints or noncompliance, but also in phenomena with low frequency. Small samples complicate causal evaluations for at least three reasons: (i) they are associated with greater sampling error, (ii) p-values based on standard tests are not trustworthy and the statistical power of these tests can be too low to detect significant program effects, (iii) the validity of parameter inference strongly depends on distributional assumptions. This paper proposes a simple approximation for the p-values to use in the regression analysis of treatment effects models with normal or nonnormal error distributions. The approximation is derived from recent developments in likelihood analysis and has a third-order distributional accuracy. Thus, for very small or medium-sized samples, the proposed method has remarkably higher accuracy compared to traditional ones that usually rely on normality or large samples. The method is then applied to aviation data to evaluate the impact of accidents on airfares, which is relevant to both airlines and insurance companies

Automation in Aviation: An Advancement or Hindrance to Aviation Safety?

Transportation at large is becoming increasingly automated, and aviation has often been at the forefront of this technological movement. Automation’s presence in the cockpit has been quite advantageous by improving economics, enhancing safety, and arguably reducing workload. However, its implementation has also presented several challenges, including but not limited to complacency and overreliance on automation, manufacturer design errors, and automation surprise. To overcome these challenges and mitigate safety issues preemptively, methods and strategies must be devised to improve the implementation of automation in aviation. Upon review of eight case studies from accident reports where the use of automation was a contributing factor, several recommendations were developed to improve the implementation of automation in aviation. Airline operators should encourage the use of manual flying skills when applicable and ensure that crews are competently educated and trained on automated systems. Manufacturers on the other had should increase the collaboration during the design phase with both the end user and regulatory agency, strengthen the utilization of the Human Centered Approach to systems integration and improve Human Factors and Ergonomics studies for instrumentation to improve ease of use for pilots. As the world becomes more technologically advanced, the delicate relationship between man and machine must be carefully managed

Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Drivers: Autonomous Vehicles and AI-Chaperone Liability

The future of mainstream autonomous vehicles is approaching in the rearview mirror. Yet, the current legal regime for tort liability leaves an open question on how tortious Artificial Intelligence (AI) devices and systems that are capable of machine learning will be held accountable. To understand the potential answer, one may simply go back in time and see how this question would be answered under traditional torts. This Comment tests whether the incident involving an autonomous vehicle hitting a pedestrian is covered under the traditional torts, argues that they are incapable of solving this novel problem, and ultimately proposes a new strict liability tort: AI-Chaperone Liability. Because advancement in technology requires advancement in the law, AI-Chaperone Liability is a step forward in unchartered territory

The Manual Flight Skill of Airline Pilots

The manual flight ability of commercial airline pilots has been scrutinized after several aviation disasters in the first decade of the 21st century where pilot error has been a contributing cause. Voluntary pilot incident reports from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration\u27s Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) were examined as one method to determine the prevalence of manual flight skill decline among airline pilots. The investigation studied reports from unstabilized approach to landings where the pilots manually controlled the aircraft during descent. An analysis of the ASRS reports from pilots flying traditional flight deck aircraft compared with pilots flying aircraft with advanced technology flight decks revealed no significant difference in unstabilized approaches. Two additional analyses comparing ASRS reports from regional air carriers versus major air carriers as well as international operations and domestic operations from major air carriers, determined no significant differences in unstabilized approaches. The research indicates that ASRS voluntary incident reports cannot determine significant differences in airline pilot manual flight control between different airline operation types or flight deck technologies

Design and development of a new course on Ethics in Aerospace Engineering

The competence to apply ethics in the development of new technologies is currently not addressed in university programs for aerospace engineering at the national level. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to guide future aerospace engineers in making ethical decisions. This project is divided into three different parts. In the first one, different teaching methodologies are studied. Active learning, which includes case studies, is concluded to be the most effective for students. In the second part, using these methodologies, the syllabus for an elective on ethics for the aerospace engineering curriculum has been developed. This syllabus covers important moral concepts in the design, development, testing, and certification processes, as well as the concept of responsibility. Finally, in the third part, a teaching guide has been developed, divided into each session, to carry out the instruction of this course. After all, this project has successfully fulfilled all its initial requirements and developed a course that is ready to be taught