Performance-based analysis of aerodrome weather forecasts

Weather forecasting is a critical aspect for optimizing aerodrome operations. It allows ensuring on-ground and en-route safe and efficient air traffic management. Being a continuous and mandatory operation for aerodrome systems, it routinely produces large amounts of data. This paper suggests a customized performance-based analysis of weather forecasts accuracy in line with ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) standards. The analysis is instantiated into operational settings of a Euro-pean Weather Service Provider (WSP), and its implications for operations of an Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP), by means of exemplary data intelligence reports including accuracy indicators. The analysis is meant to support decision makers in managing aerodrome weather forecasting gaining knowledge from past operations

A BIM-based PSS approach for the management of maintenance operations of building equipment

The service-centered economy has grown considerably in the last few years, shifting from product-based solutions towards service centered offerings, i.e., Product-Service System (PSS) solutions. Such an approach is also emerging in the context of building equipment, where maintenance activities play a fundamental role in facility management. In this field, Building Information Modeling (BIM) based tools are diffusely used to improve the performances of facility management. However, few studies have addressed the above issues while considering a shift from product-based approaches in favor of more advanced servitization models. The study aims at integrating BIM based approaches in a PSS context for the improvement of the management of maintenance operations of building equipment. A general framework for maintenance management has been developed, merging the implementation of the PSS components in a BIM model for the definition of maintenance management. A first application of this methodology to a real case study concerning the elevators of an existing building has shown the efficacy of the proposed approach. The study highlighted the benefits that can be achieved, especially in terms of reduced periods of equipment unavailability, reduced costs and augmented customer satisfaction, while enhancing the information exchange between the PSS actors. Hence, although further research is still needed for its validation, the proposed approach can offer practical insights for the development of promising BIM-based PSS solutions for facility management in the construction industry

Unmanned aerial systems: Status and Forthcoming challenges for Safety Risk Management

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) promises a revolution in urban transportation: for the first time ever, cities will be able to use the third dimension for their mobility needs. The traditional aviation industry and high-tech newcomers alike are making huge investments to make this - still unproven - technology a reality. Although Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have now for some time been used in segregated airspace where separation from other air traffic can be assured, potential users have interests to deploy UAS in non-segregated airspaces. Recent technological and operational improvements give reason to believe that UAS safety and performance capabilities are maturing. However, there is still the need for establishing a systematic agreement between UAS safety policies with commonly accepted UAS Safety Risk Management processes. This agreement is needed to show that the risks related to UAS operations in all the different airspace classes can be adequately controlled in a way that would not jeopardize current safety levels and safety mitigations effectiveness. This study aims to investigate the current status of UAS operations and future concepts of operations with specific interest in the management of safety risk. This manuscript aims to summarize some of regulatory aspects currently available linked to safety investigation and reporting of drone operations and consequently draw some potential lines for future research

Reviewing qualitative research approaches in the context of critical infrastructure resilience

Modern societies are increasingly dependent on the proper functioning of critical infrastructures (CIs). CIs produce and distribute essential goods or services, as for power transmission systems, water treatment and distribution infrastructures, transportation systems, communication networks, nuclear power plants, and information technologies. Being resilient becomes a key property for CIs, which are constantly exposed to threats that can undermine safety, security, and business continuity. Nowadays, a variety of approaches exist in the context of CIs’ resilience research. This paper provides a state-of-the-art review on the approaches that have a complete qualitative dimension, or that can be used as entry points for semi-quantitative analyses. The study aims to uncover the usage of qualitative research methods through a systematic review based on PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). The paper identifies four principal dimensions of resilience referred to CIs (i.e., techno-centric, organisational, community, and urban) and discusses the related qualitative methods. Besides many studies being focused on energy and transportation systems, the literature review allows to observe that interviews and questionnaires are most frequently used to gather qualitative data, besides a high percentage of mixed-method research. The article aims to provide a synthesis of literature on qualitative methods used for resilience research in the domain of CIs, detailing lessons learned from such approaches to shed lights on best practices and identify possible future research directions

Learning from incidents: A supply chain management perspective in military environments

Supply chain management (SCM) represents a crucial role in the military sector to ensure operation sustainability. Starting from the NATO handbook for military organizational learning, this paper aims at investigating the link between technical inconveniences and sustainable supply chain operations. Taking advantage of the learning from incidents (LFI) models traditionally used in the risk and safety management area, this paper proposes an information management system to support organizational learning from technical inconveniences in a military supply chain. The approach is discussed with reference to the Italian context, in line with international and national standards for technical inconvenience reporting. The results of the paper show the benefits of adopting a systematic LFI system for technical inconveniences, providing related exemplar business intelligence dashboards. Further implications for the generalization of the proposed information management system are presented to foster a healthy and effective reporting environment in military scenarios

managing safety data the tokai experience for the air navigation service providers

Abstract Socio-technical systems such as the Air Traffic Management (ATM) system have become increasingly complex in the last decades and a call for systematic data analyses is necessary to manage operations and related criticalities. In the context of risk and safety management, it thus become central to allow structured and complete in-depth understanding of safety performance, especially in relation to safety events (accidents, incidents, near-misses). Following relevant international and EU regulations (ICAO Annex 13, EC Directive 2003/42/EC, EU 376/2014, etc.), EUROCONTROL developed the TOKAI (Toolkit for ATM Occurrence Investigation) as a tool to support occurrence investigation and generate a structured repository for safety data management. This paper aims to present the general features of TOKAI, also in line with the legislative context. The paper provides an overview on how incident data from TOKAI may contribute to support an effective data management in aviation, by means of exemplar statistical analysis to support the decision-making at different organizational levels

EOQ inventory model for perishable products under uncertainty

Perishable products require accurate inventory control models as their effect on operations management can be critical. This assumption is particularly relevant in highly uncertain and dynamic markets, as for the ones generated by the pandemic era. This paper presents an inventory control model for perishable items with a demand rate variable over time, and dependent on the inventory rate. The model also considers the potential for backlogging and lost sales. Imperfect product quality is included, and deterioration is modelled as a time-dependent variable. The framework envisages the possibility to define variables affected by uncertainty in terms of probability distribution functions, which are then jointly managed via a Monte Carlo simulation. This paper is intended to provide an analytical formulation to deal with uncertainty and time-dependent inventory functions to be used for a variety of perishable products. The formulation is designed to support decision-making for the identification of the optimal order quantity. A numerical example exemplifies the outcomes of the paper and provides a cost-based sensitivity analysis to understand the role of main parameters

A system-approach for recoverable spare parts management using the discreteweibull distribution

Optimal spare parts management strategies allow sustaining a system's availability, while ensuring timely and effective maintenance. Following a systemic perspective, this paper starts from the Multi-Echelon Technique for Recoverable Item Control (METRIC) to investigate the potential use of a Weibull distribution for modelling items' demand in case of failure. Adapting the analytic formulation of METRIC through a Discrete Weibull distribution, this study originally proposes a METRIC-based model (DW-METRIC) to be used for modelling the stochastic demand in multi-item systems, in order to ensure process sustainability. The DW-METRIC has been tested in a case study related to an industrial plant constituted by 98 items in a passive redundancy configuration. Comparing the results via a simulation model, the outcomes of the study allow defining applicability criteria for the DW-METRIC, in those settings where the DW-METRIC offers more accurate estimations than the traditional METRIC

Framing the FRAM: A literature review on the functional resonance analysis method

The development of the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) has been motivated by the perceived limitations of fundamentally deterministic and probabilistic approaches to understand complex systems’ behaviour. Congruent with the principles of Resilience Engineering, over recent years the FRAM has been progressively developed in scientific terms, and increasingly adopted in industrial environments with reportedly successful results. Nevertheless, a wide literature review focused on the method is currently lacking. On these premises, this paper aims to summarise all available published research in English about FRAM. More than 1700 documents from multiple scientific repositories were reviewed through a protocol based on the PRISMA review technique. The paper aims to uncover a number of characteristics of the FRAM research, both in terms of the method's application and of the authors contributing to its development. The systematic analysis explores the method in terms of its methodological aspects, application domains, and enhancements in qualitative and quantitative terms, as well as proposing potential future research directions

Safety Assessment For An ATM System Change: A Methodology For The ANSPs

Air Traffic Management (ATM) is a continuously evolving process, where many current system elements derive from a time when ATM characteristics were very different from today. Nowadays, the provision of ATM services has to design new solutions and adapt to new scenarios. Although ESARR 4 and EU Regulation 1035/2011 define the need of evaluating ATM system risks before implementing any change, they do not define a practical tool to support the decision-makers. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap, proposing a systematic methodology; the Preliminary System Safety Assessment Tool (PSSA-T) capable of helping the decision makers in evaluating safety implications due to system changes. PSSA-T relies on the definition of two Indexes, which have been built according to the Aerospace Performance Factor (APF) methodology, and allow safety assessment of any proposed change. In detail, the former Index compares the evolutionary scenario with the current one and the latter evaluates the evolutionary scenario in which there is a failure of intervention, in the hypothesis the system change has been implemented already. A preliminary study about the change from Flight Progress Strip (FPS) to the Electronic-FPS clarifies the outcome of the study