Implications of climate change for the UK aviation sector

With demand for air travel continuing to rise, its climate impacts are expected to increase dramatically and will be of continuing concern to decision makers. There is also a need to better understand the ways a changing climate may impact on air transport, both operationally and economically. This will influence safety, efficiency and future environmental impacts and is important in the development of mitigation policies. This thesis investigates a new angle, the implications of climate change for the UK aviation sector, with an aim to understand the impacts of changes in weather-related delays and severe weather events, using a case study of London’s Heathrow airport. Statistical analysis of delay and weather data was used to identify the key weather parameters associated with weather-related delays at Heathrow and their level of impact. Seven climate models were used to calculate forecast changes in weather parameters in 2050 for three emission scenarios. These changes were then used to derive an estimate of weather-related delay frequency and the level of impact in 2050. The vulnerabilities of UK air traffic operations to changes in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, associated with climate change, were identified and analysed using the example of a simulated short closure of Heathrow airport with associated cancellations and diversions. This thesis additionally explored how sector response to extreme weather events and changing climate conditions could influence the climate impact of air transport. Changes in CO2 emissions due to large system disruption are assessed. Possible changes in wind speed and direction were also examined, as these can affect flight times and trajectories, and so influence fuel use and hence CO2 emission

Relationship between Air Traffic Demand, Safety and Complexity in High-Density Airspace in Europe

Air traffic performance of the European air traffic system depends not only on traffic demand but also on airspace structure and its traffic distribution. These structural (airspace structure) and flow characteristics (factors such as traffic volume, climbing/descending traffic, mix of aircraft type, military area activity) influence airspace complexity, which can affect controller workload and influence the probability of safety occurrence. In other words, all these dynamic and static complexity components can potentially have an impact upon the safety of the air traffic management (ATM) system. Having in mind fluctuation in traffic on daily, seasonal or annual level in certain airspace, a few questions arise: How changes in traffic demand influence complexity and conflict risk? Is there any correlation between traffic demand, conflict risk and complexity? and Are there any differences between seasons? For that purpose, an investigation is performed on FAB Europe Central (FABEC) airspace, based on 2 weeks of operated traffic during the summer and fall of 2017. Air traffic complexity is estimated using the EUROCONTROL complexity metrics, while conflict risk is assessed using the conflict risk assessment simulation tool. Results show that certain positive relationship exists between traffic demand, conflict risk and complexity

Natural language processing for aviation safety : Extracting knowledge from publicly-available loss of separation reports

Background: The air traffic management (ATM) system has historicallycoped with a global increase in traffic demand ultimately leading toincreased operational complexity.When dealing with the impact of this increasing complexity on systemsafety it is crucial to automatically analyse the losses of separation(LoSs) using tools able to extract meaningful and actionableinformation from safety reports.Current research in this field mainly exploits natural languageprocessing (NLP) to categorise the reports,with the limitations that theconsidered categories need to be manually annotated by experts andthat general taxonomies are seldom exploited.Methods: To address the current gaps,authors propose to performexploratory data analysis on safety reports combining state-of-the-arttechniques like topic modelling and clustering and then to develop analgorithm able to extract the Toolkit for ATM Occurrence Investigation(TOKAI) taxonomy factors from the free-text safety reports based onsyntactic analysis.TOKAI is a tool for investigation developed by EUROCONTROL and itstaxonomy is intended to become a standard and harmonisedapproach to future investigations.Results: Leveraging on the LoS events reported in the publicdatabases of the Comisi n de Estudio y An lisis de Notificaciones deIncidentes de Tr nsito A reo and the United Kingdom AirproxBoard,authors show how their proposal is able to automaticallyextract meaningful and actionable information from safetyreports,other than to classify their content according to the TOKAItaxonomy.The quality of the approach is also indirectly validated by checking theconnection between the identified factors and the main contributor ofthe incidents.Conclusions: Authors' results are a promising first step toward the fullautomation of a general analysis of LoS reports supported by resultson real-world data coming from two different sources.In the future,authors' proposal could be extended to othertaxonomies or tailored to identify factors to be included in the safetytaxonomies.KeywordsATM, Safety, Resilience, Natural Language Processing, Losses ofSeparation, Safety Reports, TOKA

Composite risk index: the new Safety Performance Indicator of risk exposure

Conceptually, all safety programmes desire accurate safety risk quantification in order to provide a meaningful expression of risk. As there are typically, multiple safety risks associated with a system or event, the quantification of total safety risk is a major challenge. One possible way to define and accept the total safety risk of any system is using the concept of a composite risk estimate. This paper represents development of the new safety performance indicator and overall methodology that could be used to measure the performance of European ATM systems as a whole and its individual entities. It describes the computation of the Composite Risk Index (CRI), logic behind it, its use (on the example EUROCONTROL Member States) and limitations and areas of potential improvement. CRI represents a cumulative risk value calculated aggregating all reported, assessed and severity classified key safety-related incidents to form an index. This measure of risk exposure is based on probability and severity that considers the human perception of equivalent risk. Overall idea behind CRI is that the performance of safety system can be analysed within three important broad categories: the quality of reporting system with reporting entity, measured risks within the system, and human perception of risk

Implications of climate change for the UK aviation sector

With demand for air travel continuing to rise, its climate impacts are expected to increase dramatically and will be of continuing concern to decision makers. There is also a need to better understand the ways a changing climate may impact on air transport, both operationally and economically. This will influence safety, efficiency and future environmental impacts and is important in the development of mitigation policies. This thesis investigates a new angle, the implications of climate change for the UK aviation sector, with an aim to understand the impacts of changes in weather-related delays and severe weather events, using a case study of London’s Heathrow airport. Statistical analysis of delay and weather data was used to identify the key weather parameters associated with weather-related delays at Heathrow and their level of impact. Seven climate models were used to calculate forecast changes in weather parameters in 2050 for three emission scenarios. These changes were then used to derive an estimate of weather-related delay frequency and the level of impact in 2050. The vulnerabilities of UK air traffic operations to changes in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, associated with climate change, were identified and analysed using the example of a simulated short closure of Heathrow airport with associated cancellations and diversions. This thesis additionally explored how sector response to extreme weather events and changing climate conditions could influence the climate impact of air transport. Changes in CO2 emissions due to large system disruption are assessed. Possible changes in wind speed and direction were also examined, as these can affect flight times and trajectories, and so influence fuel use and hence CO2 emission.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceEPSRCUniversities UK for the Overseas Research Scheme (ORS)GBUnited Kingdo

Prognostic Value And Daily Trend Of Interleukin-6, Neutrophil CD64 Expression, C-Reactive Protein And Lipopolysaccharide-Binding Protein In Critically Ill Patients: Reliable Predictors Of Outcome Or Not?

Background: Severe sepsis and/or trauma complicated by multiple organ dysfunction syndrome are the leading causes of death in critically ill patients. The aim of this prospective single-centre study was to assess the prognostic value and daily trend of interleukin-6 (IL-6), neutrophil CD64 expression, C-reactive protein (CRP) and lipopolysaccharide-binding protein (LBP) regarding outcome in critically ill patients with severe trauma and/or severe sepsis. Outcome measure was hospital mortality