Hazard Identification – The Foundation of Safety Management

Risk management is defined as “The systematic identification, evaluation, and reduction of risk.” The first step in the risk management is a hazard identification.

In the airline industry, serious aircraft accidents are very rare. In normal airline operations, many incidents and errors occur before an aircraft accident ever occurs. However, even before errors, incidents or accidents occur the opportunity is always available to identify hazards in the systems, technology, SOPs, training, and processes that can create the errors, incidents, or accidents.

It is important to use a modern, open method to identify possible hazards, you can use the following sources of hazard identification:

Internal Sources

• ?Flight Data Analysis
• ?Airlines' voluntary reporting system?
• ? Internal investigations?
• ?Audits and surveys

?External Sources

• ?Accident reports?
• ?State mandatory occurrence system
• ?Safety information Exchange?
• ?Seminars and conferences?
• ?Manufacturers.

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Identify Hazards, Further Considerations

In order to identify hazards, consider:?

• Design factors, including equipment and task design.
• -Procedures and operating practices, including documentation and checklists.
• Communications, including means, terminology, and language.
• Organizational factors, such as company policies for recruitment, training, remuneration, and allocation of resources.
• ?Work environment factors, such as ambient noise and vibration, temperature, lighting, and protective equipment and clothing.
• ?Regulatory factors, including the applicability and enforce ability of regulations; certification of equipment, personnel, and procedures; and the adequacy of oversight.?
• ?Defenses?including detection and warning systems, and the extent to which the equipment is resilient against errors and failures.
• ?Human performance, including medical conditions and physical limitations.

The idea of implementing a safety Management system is to provide aframework for the whole airline to analyze and review the hazards to eliminate as far as possible the consequences from the hazards.

Whatever techniques are used, good hazard identification depends on experience and imagination. Hazard identification must draw on the knowledge and understanding of those who know about operational contexts.

Hazard versus Consequences

A hazard is defined “as a condition or an object with the potential to cause injuries to personnel, damage to equipment or structures, loss of material, or reduction of ability to perform a prescribed function.”

Airlines are systems where people actively interact with technology to deliver company services. Hazards are normal parts of these airlines’ systems. By themselves, hazards are not “bad things”.

Hazards are not necessarily damaging. Only when hazards interact with the operations of the system can the damaging possibility become a safety concern.

Consider, for example, the nature of wind. Wind is a hazard because it has the potential to cause injuries to personnel, damage to equipment or structures, loss of material, or reduction of ability to perform a prescribed function. But a fifteen-knot wind, by itself, does not necessarily result in damage during aircraft operations.

A fifteen-knot wind blowing directly down the runway will contribute to improving aircraft performance during departure. However, when a fifteen-knot wind blows in a direction ninety degrees across a runway of intended take-off or landing, it becomes a crosswind. Then the potential for damage becomes a safety concern.

So, a hazard should not necessarily be considered a “bad thing”. Hazards are an integral part of operational contexts, and their consequences can be addressed through various mitigation strategies to contain the hazard’s possible damage.

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A consequence is defined as the potential outcome (or outcomes) of a hazard. The damaging potential of hazard is through one or many consequences. In the example of the crosswind above, one consequence of the hazard “crosswind” could be “loss of lateral control”.

A further, more serious consequence could be “runway lateral excursion”. An even more serious consequence could be “damage to landing gear”. It is important, therefore, to describe all likely consequences of a hazard during hazard analysis and not only the most obvious or immediate ones.

Consequences, on the other hand, belong in the future. They do not happen until hazards interact with certain operations of the system aimed at service delivery. It is as a consequence of this interaction that hazards may allow their damaging possibilities to show.

So, we must try to reduce the hazards before they turn into consequences that will cause damage. These are called mitigation strategies.

Most hazards hold the potential for loss of property, ecological damage, and similar high-level consequences. However, describing the consequences of hazards in extreme terms makes it difficult to design mitigation strategies, except cancellation of the operation!

To design mitigation strategies to address the safety concerns about underlying, lower-level operational consequences of the hazard (for example, crosswind), such consequences must be described in operational terms (runway lateral excursion), rather than in extreme terms (loss of life).

The description of the consequences of hazards that may affect a particular operation is part of the assessment of the safety risks of the consequences of hazards. This assessment of the safety risks of the consequences of hazards allow an Airline to make an informed decision about whether it can achieve the condition of control of the safety risks and thus continue the aircraft operation.

If the consequences of the hazard (crosswind) are described in extreme terms (loss of life) rather than operational terms (runway lateral excursion), the safety risk assessment is largely voided, since the condition of control of the safety risks will unlikely be achieved unless the formidable expenditure is incurred, and the likely mitigation will be cancellation of the operation.

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Understanding Hazards

As already discussed, there exists a tendency to confuse hazards with their consequences. When this happens, the description of the hazard in operational terms then reflects the consequences rather than the hazard itself.

In other words, it is not uncommon to see that hazards are described as their consequence(s).

Naming a hazard as one of its consequences has the potential for not only disguising the true nature and damaging the potential of the hazard but also interfering with the identification of other important consequences of the hazard.?

Correctly naming hazards allows proper identification of the nature and damaging potential of the hazard. This will assist to identify the sources or mechanisms of the hazard.

More importantly, it will allow us to evaluate the outcomes in terms of the size of the potential loss, which is one of the final objectives of safety risk management.

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Types of Hazards

Hazards can be grouped into three generic families: natural hazards, technical hazards, and economic hazards.

Natural Hazards

Natural hazards are a consequence of the habitat or the environment within which operations related to the provision of services take place.

Examples of natural hazards include:

A. Weather conditions or climatic events. These include (storms, thunderstorms, lighting, Icing, etc. ).

B. Geophysical events. These include (earthquakes, volcanoes., floods, etc.)

C. Geographical conditions. These include (high terrain, large bodies of water).

D. Environmental events (smoke, fires, etc.)

E. Public health events such as epidemics of influenza or other diseases.

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Technical Hazards

Technical hazards are a result of energy sources (Electricity, fuel, hydraulic pressure, pneumatic pressure, and so on) or safety-critical functions (potential for hardware failures, software glitches, warnings, and so on) necessary for operations related to the delivery of services.

Examples of technical hazards include:

A. Deficient aircraft and aircraft components, systems, subsystems, and related equipment.

B. Poor airline’s operational facilities, tools, and related equipment.

C. Poor facilities, systems, subsystems, and related equipment that is external to the airline.

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Economic Hazards

Economic hazards are the consequence of the socio-political environment within which operations related to the provision of services take place.

Economic hazards include:

A. Economic growth.

B. Economic recession.

C. Global economic crisis.

D. Costs of material or equipment.

E. Civil disturbance.

IOSA Risk-Based Approach

Hazards are, in most cases, part of the operational context, and therefore they are present in the workplace before operational personnel “show up to work”. As physical components of the operational context or workplace, most hazards are possible to find through audits.

For each hazard there are many risks, we mean by risks, the assessment, expressed in terms of predicted?probability?and?severity, of the consequence(s) of a hazard taking as reference the worst foreseeable situation.

IATA change the IOSA audit scope for each airline to an IOSA risk-based approach that focuses on areas of potential safety risks rather than applying a "one-size-fits-all" approach. Furthermore, the new approach introduces a maturity assessment of the airline's safety-critical systems and programs.

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Before implementing IOSA, airlines must implement an effective SMS that defines the airline's management responsibilities to ensure the effectiveness of the safety management system. Each manager in their area of expertise will need to undertake activities to deliver their part of the overall safety management system. Furthermore, there must be a hazard log.

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The Hazard Log

The hazard log is one of the most important tools for managing safety, especially in an airline, focusing on pertinent safety risks, while maintaining a baseline of safety, will increase the effectiveness of the audit and contribute to the overall industry goal of reducing the accident rate.

It is the principal means of tracking the status of all identified hazards, decisions made, and actions taken to reduce risks, and should be used to facilitate competent authority oversight, internal audit, IOSA Audit, etc.

The hazards, accident sequences, and accidents recorded are those which could conceivably occur, as well as those which have already been experienced. The term hazard log is slightly misleading as the information stored relates to the entire safety program and covers accidents, controls, risk evaluation, as well as data on hazards.

The hazard log provides traceability of how safety hazards have been dealt with during daily aircraft operations.

If safety hazards are not identified, there is no chance of controlling them or assessing their risks. Hazard identification serves several purposes including:

- Setting safety requirements

- Eliminating or controlling the hazard

- A necessary precursor to hazard analysis and risk assessment

- Planning emergency and contingency arrangements

IOSA Certified airlines are those airlines that are managed by a safety leader who supports positive safety culture and who is committed to safety, not just by writing SOPs in the operation manuals, it is by implementing effectively those SOPs, and by providing the proper resources.?

If baby airlines have no hazard log, implementing IOSA for these airlines is a joke, even if its age?is more 50 years ( it is baby airline).

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Consultancy Services include preparing/updating operations manuals, implementing SMS, and preparing air cargo marketing plans,etc.

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