Global Safety Information Project

GSIP is helping the aviation industry harness safety critical data and information to make the safest mode of transportation even safer.

About

About the Global Safety Information Project

The Global Safety Information Project (GSIP) is a worldwide initiative led by Flight Safety Foundation that guides the aviation community’s response to challenges that may emerge from safety data collection and processing systems (SDCPS). Focus areas include safety data collection, safety data analysis, safety information protection, and safety information sharing. While GSIP initially concentrated on the Asia Pacific and Pan America regions, the project’s influence has steadily expanded to additional parts of the world.

GSIP To Date

Since the initiation of GSIP in 2015, Flight Safety Foundation has conducted over 25 focus group sessions, workshops, and conferences with global aviation stakeholders in 15 countries throughout Asia Pacific and Pan America. The Foundation also hosted a four-part GSIP webinar series.

In 2017, the Foundation published three SDCPS-focused toolkits, intended to help the global aviation community elevate its safety risk management capabilities and information sharing practices.

Detailed summaries of each year’s accomplishments, work products, findings and recommendations are provided in annual GSIP Reports.

Our Observations

Today, organizations cannot simply rely on reactive methods of safety risk management. Industry must take proactive and predictive approaches to address operational risk and drive the evolution of safety. Organizations learn about risk through numerous data sources, such as employee safety reports, flight data monitoring, audits, and various reports generated about operational conditions. Many of these data sources are not in the public arena, but instead are being collected, analyzed, and stored internally by organizations during routine operations. The Foundation believes that industry needs methods and mechanisms to share findings from these data. While there have been some advances in information sharing, most industry stakeholders keep their data and analyses private.

While the risk associated with aviation can be mitigated, it can never be eliminated completely. Through GSIP, the Foundation learned that the industry still has room to improve its understanding of risk. What is the quantified risk of midair collision in a specific region of the world? What is the quantified risk of turbulence that results in injury? Questions like these are difficult to answer today, but they are questions the industry needs to answer moving forward to make the safest mode of transportation even safer.

GSIP Moving Forward

In 2018 and beyond, Flight Safety Foundation will continue efforts to familiarize industry with the GSIP toolkits. We intend to collect feedback and best practices from early implementers and will incorporate lessons learned into future versions of the toolkits.

The Foundation is also engaged in efforts to develop a Safety Performance Monitoring Handbook, providing guidance and best practices for safety performance monitoring as detailed in ICAO Annex 19, Safety Management, and ICAO Doc 9859, Safety Management Manual.

Additionally, the Foundation also intends to develop a fourth GSIP toolkit that presents a strategic blueprint for global safety risk management based on emerging techniques and technologies.

Feedback on our work to date and our planned activities is welcomed and encouraged. Please contact Mark Millam, vice president, technical, with your comments.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Safety Performance Monitoring

GSIP Webinars

GSIP Press Releases

GSIP Related Articles

Safety Performance Monitoring Survey

In 2018, Flight Safety Foundation administered a safety performance survey to learn how States and service providers currently monitor safety performance, identify how safety performance monitoring differs among different stakeholders, and gather best practices and insights from a wide variety of global aviation safety practitioners.

The Safety Performance Dashboard is designed to communicate survey results to the global aviation community. The dashboard enables you to develop on-demand safety performance insights through advanced analytics capabilities.

The dashboard consists of four, customizable visualizations, accessible through the tabs in the upper-left corner. Survey data can be filtered by clicking on the various elements of the dashboard, such as region or organization type. This interactive filtering capability allows you to conduct targeted deep dives into all meaningful aspects of the survey, such as understanding which risk areas are most important to different organization types in different ICAO regions.

The dashboard was developed by the Fort Hill Group.

Webinars — Discussions with Industry

In 2017, the Flight Safety Foundation hosted a four-part Global Safety Information Project (GSIP) webinar series to facilitate discussions with the global aviation community. The webinars helped the Foundation engage with new GSIP stakeholders, validate GSIP toolkit contents, and identify emerging safety data collection and processing system (SDCPS) needs from participants.

Each 90-minute webinar focused on a single toolkit level of intensity and was held twice to accommodate participants in Pan America and Asia Pacific time zones. Each webinar began with a presentation by Flight Safety Foundation staff and concluded with a question and discussion session with participants.

Recordings of each portion of the webinars are available through the links below.

Date	FSF Presentation Recording	Participant Discussion Recording
Part 1 May 16/17	Play	Play
Part 2 Jun 27/28	Play	Play
Part 3 Jul 25/26	Play	Play
Part 4 Aug 24/25	Play	Play

FAQs

GSIP Frequently Asked Questions

What is the project about?

The Global Safety Information Project (GSIP) is seeking information from aviation industry stakeholders within the Asia-Pacific and Pan-America regions pertaining to safety data collection and processing. The project aims to ascertain what types of data are being collected within the regions, what systems are used to collect and store that data, and how this information is used to assist with improving aviation safety.

Why is the Foundation leading this project?

We know that there are numerous efforts already underway to collect and analyze data throughout the world. The Foundation believes that the first step in achieving any sort of a global standard for data collection and analysis is to understand what is already being done. The Foundation is uniquely positioned, as a trusted, international organization, to take the lead on this work.

Why is it important to collect this data?

The world of data is growing rapidly and it takes conscious, deliberate and focused efforts to consider how to harness the power of this data. Data gathered from normal operations, when de-identified and combined with data from other stakeholders, can identify risk before it leads to a safety problem. The analysis of this data allows safety professionals to determine how to address this risk.

Isn’t aviation already safe?

Aviation is the safest way to travel, but the investment in safety is never done. Over the years, we’ve seen firsthand that the collection, sharing and analysis of data gathered from normal operations, both through automatic systems and voluntarily reported, gives safety professionals the ability to identify the smallest risk and develop procedures or plans to mitigate it — before it leads to a tragedy.

Will the assessment responses be treated as confidential?

All responses provided in support of the assessment will be treated as confidential. It is important that honest responses be provided to ascertain the true state of the management of safety data and information.

Will the results be publicly available?

It is intended that the results of this work will be made publicly available through the Foundation website and that the findings of the reports will be presented through a variety of aviation forums.

What will we be doing?

In 2015, we hosted focus groups in key cities throughout Asia-Pacific and the Pan America regions to better understand what data collection is already happening, how it is being collected, how it is used and also what challenges these stakeholders face in collecting and analyzing this information. We held workshops in 2016 in the same regions to share our approach to develop toolkits describing many of the industry practices. Since late in 2016, we have been engaging with members and other experts in the industry to refine those toolkits.

Who is funding this project?

Currently, the project is funded through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. We encourage other governments, companies or individuals to support this work. Please contact us if you would like additional information.

Which stakeholders will be involved in the project?

The key stakeholders that have been identified to be a part of the project include: national regulators, national investigation bodies, air traffic control organizations, airport operators, airlines and other aircraft operators, aircraft manufacturers, engine manufacturers, flight data analysis organizations, legal experts and any other organization that collects aviation safety information.

Isn’t there a risk to sharing data for enforcement of legal liability?

Protection of safety data is a major priority for the Foundation. Currently, very few countries have adequate protections for this data and we understand why stakeholders may hesitate to get involved. One of the major parts of our GSIP project is to address the legal protection of data. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is taking important steps to address this issue and GSIP will reflect the decisions and language being developed in Montreal.

What information will GSIP be collecting?

GSIP is not collecting any actual safety data. The information we will be collecting is limited to understanding the types of information and data that are being collected, the methods used in collecting this information and data, how they are processed, how they are used to enhance aviation safety within organisations and in general, what types of systems and databases are used.

How will the information be used?

At the conclusion of the project, a report will be produced by the Foundation and circulated for the purpose of peer review and for any additional input that may be relevant to the project.