Formal analysis of aviation incidents

Abstract

In this paper, a formal, agent-based approach is presented to analyse the dynamics of accidents and incidents in aviation. The approach comprises a number of steps, which include development of domain ontology, formalisation of scenarios, formal specification of dynamic properties, identification of interlevel relations between dynamic properties at different aggregation levels, and automated verification of dynamic properties. The approach is illustrated by means of a case study on a runway incursion incident, and a number of advantages with respect to the current state-of-the-art are discussed. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.