Framework for Aviation Safety Cost Optimization through Risk Mitigation Tolerance Analysis

Abstract

The aviation industry depicts itself to be one of the topmost safety-conscious industries where thorough emphasis is focused on safety management systems as a toolbox for hazard identification and risk mitigation. The promulgation of regulatory safety measures for in-air and on-ground operations has collated additional time and operational costs for all types of aviation establishments. The risk probability and severity aspects of safety models have been vastly studied in previous research mainly through qualitative analysis and risk matrix formulation. In conventional studies, the “risk tolerance” has been mainly incorporated with the probability and the severity of the risks where less or no emphasis is laid on the cost-benefit analysis. Hence, this study focuses on the implications of the “cost variable” on risk mitigation tolerance analysis in a collaborative approach of qualitative and quantitative analysis. The study converges the theoretical relationship of the “safety tolerance levels”, towards the “overall safety cost” which aims to bridge a significant gap in the contemporary aviation safety literature. In bridging the unpredictability of the post-failure cost, the optimization of the cost of safety assurance enables expanded forecast ability by mathematically calibrating the strategic positioning of the safety threshold. The scale of the airline and the regulatory mandates have been considered in developing the conceptual ideology. Moreover, the study will span through to the development of a data-driven mathematical model for the cost to tolerance variation. Hence, the theoretical framework of this study proposes a more generalized approach that can be customized for the safety cost-benefit analysis and resources allocation policies of diversified airline operations spanning from lowcost carriers to high-end niche markets with utmost safety concerns.