Aviation safety workshop coming to Sydney

A global aviation safety initiative is holding a two-day workshop in Sydney later in March to discuss the best ways to collect and analyse aviation safety data.

The Global Safety Information Project (GSIP), which is being led by Flight Safety Foundation, is holding 12 workshops around the world to develop toolkits for collecting and analysing safety data.

The first workshop is being held in Singapore on March 16, with Sydney to follow on March 22-23.

“The intent of the workshops is to look at the most effective ways to gather safety data and conduct risk assessments from both an individual organization and through partnerships with other stakeholders in the aviation industry,” Flight Safety Foundation said in a statement.

“To prevent future accidents, the industry is transitioning from the knowledge gained from aircraft accidents to the knowledge gained from hazards that are discovered during regular operations.”

The project held a series of focus group meetings across the Asia Pacific and in the Americas in 2015, which sought to establish what types of safety information and data were being collected by key players in the industry and how this data was being used to enhance aviation safety.

“In the months since the last GSIP focus group, we have been compiling and analysing the information we gathered from a range of stakeholders, including airlines and other operators, air navigation service providers, regulators, accident investigative bodies and airports,” GSIP leader and Flight Safety Foundation vice president technical Mark Millam said in a statement.

“The next step is to begin to develop tool kits that may be useful as roadmaps for safety data collection and processing systems (SDCPS) that are so crucial to safety management systems and state safety programs.”

The Flight Safety Foundation is a non-profit organisation focused on research, education, advocacy and publishing to improve aviation safety.

In 2015, Flight Safety Foundation vice president of global programs Greg Marshall said the organisation had also assembled a legal advisory committee to look at the issue of legal protection and develop a legal toolkit, including some model legislation that countries could adopt to provide protection of voluntary safety data and information.

Marshall said the toolkit would be a purely voluntary measure.

“We are finding some states probably won’t because of the culture and other aspects,” Marshall told Australian Aviation in an interview in 2015.

“The philosophy of Just Culture just doesn’t sit within those states naturally.

“But we are finding a number of states saying that they would actually like to something about it but don’t know how, so those toolkits will be ideally suited to those states that are willing to put in place those legal protections and establish those voluntary safety reporting systems.”

The concept of Just Culture centres around not punishing people for actions, omissions or decisions taken by them based on their experience and training. At the same time, gross negligence, wilful violations and destructive acts were not tolerated.

Sydney will play host to the GSIP workshop on March 22-23.