A fuzzy expert system for aviation risk assessment

The Flight Operations Risk Assessment System (FORAS) is a risk modeling methodology which represents risk factors and their interrelationships as a fuzzy expert system. A FORAS risk model provides a quantitative relative risk index representing an estimate of the cumulative effects of potential hazards on a single flight operation. FORAS systematizes the process of eliciting human expertise, provides for a natural representation of the knowledge in an expert system, and automates the process of risk assessment. The FORAS tool is valuable to airline safety departments for examining risk trends, to pilots and dispatchers for assessing risks associated with each flight, and to airline management for quantifying the effects of making safety-related changes. The quantitative relative risk index generated by FORAS allows comparisons between flights, and facilitates the communication of safety issues throughout the organization.