A Hot Topic: Safety Management Systems (SMS) at Airports
A few years ago as the FAA was preparing the final reviews of Advisory Circular 150/200-37A Safety Management Systems for Airports (link), I was doing research on the history, lessons learned, and needs of an SMS system for Esri's Airport customers and ArcGIS users. It was a revealing dive into a deep repository of information over years of study and research. The Airport Cooperative Research Board, or ACRP, is authorized by Congress, sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration, and managed by the Transportation Research Board and provided a wealth of published information covering pilot studies, legal issues related to SMS implementations and operations, safety risk management, and many more topics. I highly suggest those in the Airport SMS arena, or those new to it, review the diverse resources in their Safety Collection (link).
Figure 1-1 from FAA AC 150/5200-37A
With lots of reading, highlighting, and note taking completed I could clearly see that safety management is going to be beneficial to the flying community. Additionally, I could see that SMS including the identification of hazards, assessment of risk, and oversight of mitigation actions all were supported by something happening somewhere at some time. The place and time based tools of ArcGIS could ably support the deployment and implementation of SMS at a certificated or non-certificated airport anywhere in the world.
I want to keep this post fairly short, so I will hope you will read the attached document that we have prepared to talk about SMS and how the geographic approach can enable SMS success. This short publication will give our community an overview of SMS, the importance of data driven safety performance, and how our tools can help. If you and your team at the airport would like to learn more about the details of our deployment and configuration patter please reach out to us at airports@esri.com
Thanks for reading- we look forward to your comments and feedback and hope we can connect soon. If you are coming to the Esri User Conference in July, we'd be glad to talk with you about SMS and ArcGIS.
Be safe out there!
-tom