The layperson's perception and understanding of risk is something that tends to make aviation safety professionals slightly indignant. In order to be successful in the aviation safety field, safety managers must intimately understand the core elements affecting operational safety, including:
Modern aviation safety management systems (SMS) are designed to provide aviation service providers with a proven, standardized framework to reduce risk to as low as reasonably practical (ALARP). Yet what is the risk?
After I became an aviation safety professional, I was tasked with developing an SMS database that tracked and documented operational hazards and risks. Now I consider myself an intelligent person; however, my understanding of hazards and risks was not correct at this time. In fact, my head was on backward!
My lack of formal safety risk management education became immediately apparent to aviation safety SMEs (subject-matter experts) when I started discussing workflows surrounding proactive hazard and risk management. I felt like a schoolchild being chastised for forgetting how to spell a common word, like "piece," with its crazy "i" before the "e" rule. I was naturally embarrassed, and I was surprised at how indignant safety managers acted when my ignorance became apparent.
In short, the risk to a layperson is not the same as to an aviation safety professional. The fact is that safety professionals can be more than a little possessive about their definitions, and how they conceptualize particular safety elements. Yet this is natural. If professionals are to collaborate on a broad, nebulous concept called aviation safety, it becomes incredibly important that they all share the same common vocabulary. When there are competing definitions for "risk" or "hazards," confusion will naturally reign.
When it comes to aviation risk, the majority of safety managers will note that
Risk is the composite of predicted severity and likelihood of potential effects of a hazard [occurrence]
(14 CFR § 5.5)
Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple in real-world operations. There are actually two ways we talk about risk:
“What is the risk of a risk?” You can see how and why the idea of risk can become confusing. When you see the word “risk” you need to carefully consider:
Establishing this context will save much confusion and miscommunication in your aviation SMS program.
So, the question is: does “risk analysis” refer to:
In fact, risk analysis addresses both faces of risk, as it:
It’s extremely important to point out again that risk in general is a function of Risk Assessment, and a specific risk is used in risk analysis. Even official documents tend to confuse this fact by using “risk analysis” and “assessing risk” interchangeably. There is a reason risk analysis and risk assessment are two different steps in the Risk Management Process. The whole process works like this:
As you can see, performing risk analysis involves both conceptions of specific risk and risk in general.
Performing quality risk analysis in aviation SMS program takes time and practice to master. Real-world situations are often messy, unclear, and organizing these situations into logical parts and in a logical order is, at best, inexact. Then throw in the fact that oversight agencies have specific expectations about how these situations should be managed, and things become even more confusing.
Therefore, risk analysis has two primary purposes:
A key point is that risk analysis in aviation SMS is a process with multiple activities and (often) multiple tools that will be used to fulfill the above purposes.
Quantitative data is data that is measurable with numbers, such as:
Qualitative data is data that is measured by judgment, such as:
Qualitative data may be aided by quantitative data, such as by using quantitative data to support a qualitative value judgment. Also, quantitative data may be aided by an expert qualitative judgment in order to assess the value of a piece of quantitative data.
Advantages of using quantitative data are:
Because of these advantages, quantitative data is looked upon kindlier and with more acceptance than qualitative data. For this reason, it should be the primary tool for risk analysis.
Advantages of qualitative data for risk analysis are:
For example, suppose you are performing risk analysis on a particular accident. Quantitatively, you might data mine for similar historical occurrences. Qualitatively, you might analyze the quality of safety culture in contributing/mitigating the accident, with an outcome like, “Lack of strong safety culture was a root cause for issue as it delayed hazard identification response and allowed the incident to more quickly result in hazard occurrence.”
Here are popular tools for risk analysis in aviation SMS programs:
Here is a great resource for helping you establish how well you understand hazards and risks, which will greatly aid you in your risk analysis, as well as guidance for your risk management process:
Last updated April 2024.