quantitative risk assessment of temporary hazards and maintenance worksites in the airport safety areas a case study

Abstract Airports are complex environments where the operational conditions are subjected to different risks, both due to the intrinsic nature of the manoeuvres themselves and to the external factors, as for human actions or environmental causes. An important risk factor is the presence of temporary hazards on the runway or taxiway safety area, including work in progress related to maintenance or construction operations. Both ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) and FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) defined their own approach on this topic. The FAA, in the Advisory Circular "Operational Safety on Airports During Construction", states the impossibility of any construction activities within the safety area when the runway is active, while the ICAO, in the Doc 9137 "Airport Service Manual" Part 6, states specific operational restrictions for the airport which allow the presence of temporary hazard in the safety area. This paper analyses the impact of temporary hazards (for example worksites) in the safety areas, according to ICAO requirements, by using a performance approach. The method has been applied to an international airport, using the software RSARA e LRSARA, provided by ACRP (The Airport Cooperative Research Program), in order to calculate the expected risk level within the safety area. This method provides a rapid and practical evaluation of risk level, according to the ICAO Safety Management System approach, in order to optimize the maintenance operation and construction in the safety area, minimizing the closing time of the runway. The main aim of this study is to verify if, under temporary restrictive operational condition (such as the limitation on available runway length and on traffic mix and weather conditions) related to the temporary hazard presence, it is possible to guarantee sufficient safety level, without occurring in runway closures. From the analysis arose that the first factor that affects the risk level for a runway is the temporary hazard dimension: while the environmental conditions (crosswind and pavement conditions) have a minor effect