Using intent information to investigate the relationship between missed detections and false alarms in conflict detection verification

Aerospace systems are becoming more dependent on software for safety critical functions such as conflict detection. The notion of intent is rarely ever addressed in software decision aiding and alerting tools such as conflict detection devices. Traditional modelling techniques for specifying and verifying safety properties of software systems rarely allow for a framework in which to specify intent. Since intent is a continuously changing quantity, a hybrid model of the aircraft conflict detection scheme is necessary in order to incorporate intent. An aircraft conflict detection scheme is used to illustrate the advantages of including intent information in the conflict detection model. A comparison of the hazard analyses based on two hybrid models, one including intent information, and the other without intent information illustrates that using intent information can reduce false alarms. However, the issue of determining aircraft conformance becomes the limiting factor in this scheme.