Against the Failures of Risk Regulation Liability and Safety in Air Traffic Management (ATM)

This article aims to analyse liability issues as a further means to regulate risks, in case the precautionary measures of the delivered safety system fail. Through liability, the risk that cannot be prevented can be transferred onto those parties who are in the best position to spread them. The allocation of liability thus works as an incentive to the correct functioning of the preventive measures. Liability rules appear to be a key legal remedy which can ensure both tort reparation and a fair and efficient distribution of burdens in a legal order. In this vein, air traffic management (ATM) is addressed as a case study, which shows the main issues and the gaps that liability rules face when dealing with the trade off between risk and safety as conveyed by technology.After having clarified the nature of the relations between risk and liability on the one hand, and automation and liability on the other hand, this article analyses liability issues in the framework of ATM by approaching this topic in a comparative way between the National Airspace System (NAS) of the United States of America (USA) and the Single European Sky (SES) of the European Union (EU).

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Institutional aspects of military engagement in the process of the European air traffic management system modernisation

WUT Journal of Transportation Engineering ◽

10.5604/01.3001.0013.6573 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 125 ◽

pp. 83-99

Author(s):

Telesfor Marek Markiewicz

Keyword(s):

Traffic Management ◽

Management System ◽

Air Traffic Management ◽

Air Traffic ◽

Transport Sector ◽

System Reform ◽

The European Union ◽

Military Operations ◽

Eu Member States ◽

Traffic Management System

At the beginning of the 21st century, the European Union (EU) started work to modernise air traffic management systems and create a pan-European airspace independent of national borders. The initiated SES and SESAR programmes aim to better meet the forecasted needs of the air transport sector in the areas of safety, capacity, economic efficiency and environmental protection. These programmes are not directly applicable to military operations and training, but their implementation has a significant impact on the technical and operational issues of military aviation and the defence budgets of the EU Member States and NATO. Therefore, it is necessary to involve military authorities and experts at the earliest possible stage in all legislative and technological projects carried out under the SES initiative and the SESAR programme. The political views and decisions of allied and national military authorities regarding the Single European Sky are shaped by the institutional context in which they take place. This article reviews the participation of NATO and the European Defence Agency (EDA), the main organisations representing the military side in both programmes, and evaluates their contribution to the successful completion of the European air traffic management system reform projects.

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Assembling airspace: The Single European Sky and contested transnationalities of European air traffic management

Social Studies of Science ◽

10.1177/0306312720920704 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 50 (4) ◽

pp. 680-704

Author(s):

Christopher Lawless

Keyword(s):

Traffic Management ◽

Air Traffic Management ◽

Air Traffic ◽

Current Status ◽

The European Union ◽

Transnational Governance ◽

Political Rationality ◽

History Of ◽

Regulatory Measures

The Single European Sky (SES) encompasses a series of legislative and regulatory measures reflecting a vision for reforming Air Traffic Management (ATM) in Europe to ultimately transcend national control of airspace. This article considers SES via the conceptual framing of the sociotechnical imaginary, and finds that the embedded, distributed and interpretive character of European ATM invites further conceptualization around how actors may need to engage with infrastructural imaginaries. How is an imaginary perceived and interpreted across its spatial reach? How do the standpoints, interests and interpretations of different groups embedded within infrastructural space play a role in the construction of that spatiality and envisioned territorial assemblages? Do these standpoints and interpretations extend to the perceived imaginings of others, and what might this imply for how sociotechnical imaginaries and spatialities are co-produced? The article outlines the history of European ATM through to the current status of SES. By describing contested negotiations involving the European Union, Eurocontrol, state bodies and organized labour, SES is used as a case study to demonstrate how relations between national sovereignty and transnational governance can be imagined in different ways through ATM. The article identifies a series of interactions and tensions between interpretations of SES, involving instances of perceived appropriation by some stakeholders on the part of others and concerns over emergent risks and uncertainties. The study identifies how relations and interpretations between stakeholders, states and transnational bodies shape and are shaped by the discursive and material projection of assemblages of technology, data, space and political rationality. These projections map European airspace in different ways. Negotiating the SES imaginary has entailed a politics of suspicion and risk that reflects a certain instantiation of interpretive flexibility, involving concerns over how SES is imagined by others.

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A Survey on Operation Concept, Advancements, and Challenging Issues of Urban Air Traffic Management

Frontiers in Future Transportation ◽

10.3389/ffutr.2021.626935 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2 ◽

Author(s):

Rakesh Shrestha ◽

Inseon Oh ◽

Shiho Kim

Keyword(s):

Traffic Management ◽

Management System ◽

The United States ◽

Air Traffic Management ◽

Air Traffic ◽

Urban Traffic ◽

Urban Air ◽

Aerial Vehicles ◽

Wide Range ◽

Traffic Management System

The recent growth and adoption of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is due to their low development cost, high aerial mobility, advanced battery technology, rotors, gyroscopes, GPS, cameras, sensors, and wide range of applications. The UAV offers new possibilities for business in civil and noncivil applications such as parcel delivery, aerial mapping, agriculture, wildlife conservation, surveillance, and search and rescue. However, considering the exponential growth of various types of aerial vehicles, it is clear that advanced air traffic management services are urgently needed to control and handle the ever-increasing air traffics. In this paper, we first present the two major low-altitude UAV traffic management systems in the United States and Europe and compare them thoroughly. We present the global vision and advancement of UAV traffic management system. To understand the complexity of future air transportation system, we discuss the necessary elements required for an urban air traffic management system. We provide key strategic elements for an advanced urban traffic management through connectivity, open source, safety enhancement, and automation to maximize its impacts on the innovative future air traffic and mobility system. In the end, we discuss the challenging security issues in urban traffic management system.

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Rozbor bezpečnosti letov UAV a konspekt aktuálnych legislatívnych požiadaviek

AEROjournal ◽

10.26552/aer.c.2021.1.4 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 17 (1) ◽

pp. 24-27

Author(s):

Filip Škultéty ◽

◽

Branislav Kandera ◽

Michal Janovec

Keyword(s):

Traffic Management ◽

Air Traffic Management ◽

Air Traffic ◽

Point Of View ◽

Management Systems ◽

Current Form ◽

Special Part ◽

The One

Despite the recent legislation, which has been formed in the last five years to its current form, the safety for the UAV operation is borne by the pilot, as he/she is the one who is responsible for the direction of UAV movement thus for any collision. For this reason, it is necessary to increase the safety of UAV operations outside the duties and competencies of the pilot at a distance, for example, through anti-collision systems and air traffic management systems. This article was initially focused on analysing aviation events in Slovakia associated with the operation of the UAV. Another factor that significantly affects the operation of UAVs to a large extent is the legislation itself. A special part was devoted to the legislation in terms of airspace determination, procedures and rules of operation of the UAV. From a legislative point of view, it is currently an important aspect to define the correct and reasonable level between the restrictions in order to increase the safety of operation only on an indispensable scale, not to be very restrictive to operators.

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Safety Culture and Safety-Relevant Behavior in Air Traffic Management

Aviation Psychology and Applied Human Factors ◽

10.1027/2192-0923/a000068 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 3-17 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Michaela Schwarz ◽

K. Wolfgang Kallus

Keyword(s):

Safety Culture ◽

Traffic Management ◽

Service Providers ◽

Five Factor Model ◽

Principal Component ◽

Air Traffic Management ◽

Air Traffic ◽

Psychometric Validation ◽

Safety Attitudes ◽

Culture Development

Since 2010, air navigation service providers have been mandated to implement a positive and proactive safety culture based on shared beliefs, assumptions, and values regarding safety. This mandate raised the need to develop and validate a concept and tools to assess the level of safety culture in organizations. An initial set of 40 safety culture questions based on eight themes underwent psychometric validation. Principal component analysis was applied to data from 282 air traffic management staff, producing a five-factor model of informed culture, reporting and learning culture, just culture, and flexible culture, as well as management’s safety attitudes. This five-factor solution was validated across two different occupational groups and assessment dates (construct validity). Criterion validity was partly achieved by predicting safety-relevant behavior on the job through three out of five safety culture scores. Results indicated a nonlinear relationship with safety culture scales. Overall the proposed concept proved reliable and valid with respect to safety culture development, providing a robust foundation for managers, safety experts, and operational and safety researchers to measure and further improve the level of safety culture within the air traffic management context.

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