Safety analysis tool for automated airspace concepts (SafeATAC)

Advanced airspace concepts have been proposed to automate separation services currently being provided by human controllers. Different concepts propose fundamentally different system architectures and roles for human operators. Investigating the relationship between safety and capacity could help the concept developers to identify critical points of failure and refine systems´ architecture to reduce implementation cost and provide higher level of overall safety. In our previous work we developed a framework for safety-capacity analysis and phase transition. In this paper we present Safety Analysis Tool for Automated Airspace Concepts (SafeATAC) which is an automated tool with a graphical user interface that facilitates system-wide safety analysis, establishing safety-capacity relationships, and investigating phase transition. We discuss the SafeATAC framework and present sample analysis for candidate automation concepts. We also demonstrate how SafeATAC can be used to calculate the required reliability measures for different system components to achieve a target level of safety.