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Ing. Vladimír Plos, Ph.D.

2024, New Trends in Civil Aviation: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on New Trends in Civil Aviation 2024, Praha, České vysoké učení technické v Praze), p. 191-196), ISBN 978-80-01-07181-6, ISSN 2694-7854

Despite recent improvements in air transport safety, the types of incidents that were considered suppressed by previous corrective measures continue to recur in commercial aircraft operations. The question therefore arises whether enhanced data procession could be the next step forward. Today's commonly used approach to safety management relies primarily on the identification and mitigation of the so-called root cause, the suppression of which is intended to prevent the occurrence of negative phenomena. However, in accordance with the latest safety methods, it can be assumed that it is not enough to deal with negative data alone to understand the occurrence causality and implement meaningful mitigation measures. This research therefore builds on the principles of Safety II and aims to design and present an event classification scheme based on neutral taxonomy that deals with factors influencing events in both positive and negative contexts. This could then enable an easier comparison of events that are often investigated individually and thus bring greater insight into flight operations. The presented approach aims to name not only the weaknesses but also the strengths of airline's system. These could later serve as a basis when setting internal processes, simulator trainings or designing both normal and abnormal operating procedures.

2022, 2022 New Trends in Civil Aviation (NTCA), Praha, České vysoké učení technické v Praze), p. 153-159), ISBN 978-1-6654-5190-1

Aviation safety taxonomies are the sets of terms on which occurrence reporting systems are based today. Since occurrences in aviation are one of the main sources for aviation safety, taxonomies are used to capture as much detail as possible from an occurrence. On the basis of taxonomies, overviews are regularly created for certain periods. Currently, a systemic approach to safety is increasingly being applied in the domain. The System-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP) is one of the systemic safety models that can analyze and investigate complex systems. However, with its introduction into full operation, major changes could arise. One such change would certainly be focused on the currently used aviation safety taxonomies, such as the European Co-ordination Centre for Accident and Incident Reporting Systems (ECCAIRS). In this respect, the goal of this paper is to propose an alignment of the ECCAIRS taxonomy with STAMP, with a focus on event types. The methodology, together with the results, detail the alignment design and validation. The resulting proposal shows how the ECCAIRS taxonomy could support STAMP-based occurrence data processing and, at the same time, it brings new insights that could help to structure the taxonomy in the future.

2020, 2020 New Trends in Civil Aviation, Praha, IEEE Czechoslovakia Section), p. 95-98), ISBN 978-80-01-06726-0, ISSN 2694-7854

The article focuses on the evaluation of the impact of air traffic interruptions with regard to the number of submitted occurrences reports which were received by AAII (Air Accident Investigation Institution). The article is aimed at evaluating the current legislation, according to which there is an obligation to report, as well as identifying trends in occurrence reporting with a focus on changing the number of reports in the period of forced “shutdown” of air transport in connection with COVID19 and subsequent evaluation of the findings.

2019, TRANSPORT MEANS 2019 - PROCEEDINGS OF THE 23rd INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE, Kaunas, Kaunas University of Technology), p. 296-298), ISSN 1822-296X

In this article we tried to identify trends in aviation accident involving pilots in training. We used data from 5 different countries within Europe region from 2013 to 2018. We focused on all types of training provided by different types of eligible organizations, for example PPL training, glider pilot training, ultra light pilot training. We identified several patterns which may be used in future to increase the safety of aviation trainings. This article also briefly discusses new type of the training organization, declared training organization. We suggested how this article may be used as a reference material to determine safety level of future declared training organization.

2018, New Trends in Civil Aviation, Leiden, CRC Press/Balkema), p. 139-143), ISBN 978-0-8153-7602-6

In this paper, we introduce a new concept of improved safety data management, with the focus on data collected on a daily bases in the aviation industry. The given concept is developed as a component of the wider airport safety data management system, dealing with data from continuous process monitoring or performed audits. Availability of airport safety data enabled a development of the concept within airport environment that respects all relevant particularities typical for airport operations. Because of slight differences between various aviation industry organizations, the final solution is supposed to be tailored according to given conditions and needs of individual organizations. However, general concept represents a common starting foundation applicable without a need for extensive concept modification. Here, we aim to discuss the compatibility and internal implementation of such component into a previously developed safety data management system. It also takes into consideration an impact on daily operation performance, influenced by a change in the proposed system.

2018, New Trends in Civil Aviation, Leiden, CRC Press/Balkema), p. 295-298), ISBN 978-0-8153-7602-6

In the current approach to safety management, it is increasingly important to have good data about safety events for further decision-making on the implementation of corrective actions. In this article, we describe the options currently available for well-established safety event databases. It focuses on the importance of precisely defined database content and the correct definition of data fields in order to match internal databases with requirements for a mandatory reporting system to responsible institutions. This implies the need to systematize the used nomenclature, limit the input of free text, and so on, which means implementation of a taxonomy system into the database. Furthermore, the possibility of data utilization is outlined and an example of possible form of such database is provided.

2018, New Trends in Civil Aviation 2018, Žilinská univerzita v Žilině), p. 42-45), ISBN 978-80-554-1530-7

EU directive 1178/2011 was amended by Annex VIII where requirements for new type of a training organization, so called Declare training organization (DTO), are defined. AMC and GM materials to PART-DTO were published by EASA ED on 14 September 2018. Therefore, we would like to seize the opportunity to discuss this very up-to-date issue on the NTCL conference. In this paper we would like to present main differences between ATO and DTO, especially from the safety point of view.

2018, New Trends in Process Control and Production management, London, CRC Press), p. 513-516), ISBN 978-1-138-05885-9

The paper discusses the introduction of risk-based indicators and their subsequent use as a support tool for evaluating the economic efficiency of accepted safety measures. The first part is devoted to describing the principle of risk-based indicators, the second section describes usage of economic analysis and usage of risk-based evaluation indicators with regard to economic efficiency. The goal of this article is to declare new possibilities how to evaluate risks and how to assess cost and benefits for some safety measures. At the end there is a discussion about usage of risk-based indicators in a new economic way.

2018, ISBN 978-80-904317-5-1

2018, TRANSPORT MEANS 2018 - PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22nd INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE, Kaunas, Kaunas University of Technology), p. 709-713), ISSN 1822-296X

The paper focuses on the issues concerning enhancement of the safety data management through understanding of the internal data structure and system behaviour. To build a strong system foundation based on safety knowledge, and to find a system on how to gather such knowledge are the key issues in modern safety engineering. Systematic data collection is not a new concept, however, the focus was always on quantity, while data quality was often misunderstood or hard to understand and be dealt with. A research topic was therefore focused on quality and content of the available data, covering the state of the incoming data, their wider classification, analytics and utilization through instruments creating safety intelligence. Having a large amount of data, means having an ability for potential system behavioural pattern identification. This is however strongly influenced by data structure and applied analytical methods. Identifying behavioural pattern in other words means articulating a certain signal generated through system, carrying information regarding system state, functioning and potential deviations. Due to a fact that such system manifests as a stochastic one, it is highly influenced by certain level of internal or external noise. The goal of the research is to examine system abilities for behavioural deviations detection and elimination of the negative, unnecessary and inadequate structures in data gathering process.

2018, Transportation Research Procedia, Amsterdam, Elsevier B.V.), p. 35-43), ISSN 2352-1465

This paper deals with utilization of ontologies and conceptual structural models for improving safety data management in civil aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul organizations. It provides an overview of existing safety data management and identifies its shortcomings. Current approach to safety data management is based on global standards and regional regulations, which stem from long-term experience but recent development of advanced technologies and the demand for their versatile application creates new potential for further improvements of aviation safety. One of the technologies which have strong potential for application in aviation are ontologies and conceptual models. Ontologies deal with philosophy-motivated description of reality and conceptual models are ontology and object-oriented tools for building concrete description, the so-called conceptualization. Their value is recognized especially with regard to data management, such as data collection and processing. This is of extreme importance in modern knowledge management systems, such as safety management system, to optimize control mechanisms or to support research and development activities, which are highly sensitive to data quality, such as Safety-II concept. This paper explores the capabilities of the models with regard to current state-of-the-art in aviation maintenance and identifies strong points for domain application. Subsequently, framework for the technology deployment to the industry is outlined. Due to the non-existence of safety management requirements for aviation maintenance organizations and with regard to the current development of aviation safety in other aviation organization types, there exists strong willingness for such framework application and, according to the analysis performed, it represents one of the desired solutions for aviation industry.

2017, Aeronautica XVII, Lublin, University College of Enterprise and Administration in Lublin), p. 123-127), ISBN 978-83-60617-49-6

This article deals with the new way which is used by EASA and its Member States for risk assessment. The first part of the paper is devoted to the historical development of the approach to risk assessment where some methods are described, the second part describes the new ERCS method currently undergoing the implementation phase in EASA member states. In the final part, the ERCS methodology is evaluated, the positives and negatives of the new methodology are mentioned.

2017, TRANSPORT MEANS 2017 - PROCEEDINGS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE, Kaunas, Technical University), p. 56-59), ISSN 1822-296X

The objective of this article is to provide a brief look at development and implementation of integrated safety data collection and processing system (SDCPS) in aircraft maintenance repair organisations (MROs). The key elements of SDCPS are clearly defined taxonomy, data reporting and collection procedures and data processing. All these elements are essential when speaking about SDCPS. The article goes briefly through all these elements and discusses how SDCPS should look like in MROs.

2017, Journal of Aerospace Information Systems, 14 (5), p. 279-292), ISSN 1940-3151

European Coordination Centre for Accident and Incident Reporting Systems (EC- CAIRS) develops an information system for reporting aviation occurrences on the European scale. The system makes use of various taxonomies, like the taxonomy of event types, or a taxonomy of descriptive factors. However, the ECCAIRS data model and associated taxonomies are complex and difficult to understand, which reduces interpretability of the records. In this paper, we discuss problems ECCAIRS users face during occurrence reporting as well as subsequent search in reported occurrences. Next, we show how proper conceptual modeling with ontological foundations could leverage quality of occurrence categorization and thus better exploitability of the EC- CAIRS system. We demonstrate our ontological model on the Aviation Vocabulary Explorer, our new prototypical tool for exploring ECCAIRS.

2017, TRANSPORT PROBLEMS, 12 (2), p. 89-97), ISSN 2300-861X

The Laboratory of Aviation Safety and Security at CTU in Prague has recently started a project aimed at runway protection zones. The probability of exceeding by a certain distance from the runway in common incident/accident scenarios (take-off/landing overrun/veer-off, landing undershoot) is being identified relative to the runway for any airport. As a result, the size and position of safety areas around runways are defined for the chosen probability. The basis for probability calculation is a probabilistic model using statistics from more than 1400 real-world cases where jet airplanes have been involved over the last few decades. Other scientific studies have contributed to understanding the issue and supported the model’s application to different conditions.