Flight critical systems research (fcsr) statement of work (SOW) task order title: safety sufficiency for nextgen 1.0 background: the current air transportation system is remarkably safe. IT is so safe…

Flight critical systems research (fcsr) statement of work (SOW) task order title: safety sufficiency for nextgen 1.0 background: the current air transportation system is remarkably safe. IT is so safe that traveling by airplane is often thought to be the safest means of travel possible today. A myriad of different reasons contribute to the current high level of safety, including conservative adoption of new technologies, careful introduction of automation to augment human capabilities, and thoughtful reliance on experience for establishing safety-ensuring processes and regulations. However, the complexity and inner-connectivity of the systems, procedures, and processes proposed for the next generation air transportation system (nextgen) cast doubts on whether these reasons will continue to apply, and thus on whether the current approaches to ensuring safety will continue to suffice. Partially in response to these doubts, nasas aviation safety program began the system safety assurance technologies (ssat) project. Ssat has identified a number of challenge problems, including the assurance of flight-critical systems (afcs) which has motivated research designed to help ensure the safe deployment of flight critical systems for nextgen and beyond. Working towards the afcs challenge problem, the argument-based safety assurance (absa) sub-element of ssat is targeting three general areas: understanding safety requirements; determining needed evidence; and investigating arguments. This task addresses the safety requirements area. 2.0 scope & objective(s): the scope of this task order is to evaluate the safety issues that are likely to arise during the implementation and deployment of nextgen systems, and assesses whether existing methods, tools, processes, and regulations are sufficient to address adequately each issue. A safety issue is anything that may affect the safety of the public. A safety issue may be said to be addressed adequately if (1) a suitably high degree of confidence can be justifiably obtained that the issue will not result in a decrease in the safety of air transportation, and (2) the cost of obtaining the requisite degree of confidence is tolerable. The objective of this task is to: 1. Deliver a document that identifies proposed nexgen technologies, systems and procedures; 2. Assesses their safety implications; and 3. Identifies the sufficiency of existing tools, methods, procedures, and regulations to ensure that the current level of safety is not compromised through their deployment. 3.0 description of the work/tasks to be performed: for this task order, the contractor shall perform the following seven tasks. The sequential listing of these tasks is not intended to imply that the contractor is required to perform them in a rigid sequential order. 3.1 identify planned and proposed nextgen technologies, systems, and procedures. The contractor shall survey the existing nextgen documents, plans, and presentations to develop a list of new technologies, systems, and procedures that are expected or envisioned to be implemented within the next 20 years. At a minimum, the contractor shall include within this survey all of the documents contained in the faas nextgen library . For each element of this list, the contractor shall provide a brief description of its characteristics (concentrating on those characteristics that make IT different from existing elements of the air transportation systems), and identify the document(s) on which the description is based. 3.2 determine safety issues. The contractor shall analyze the possible safety affects of the elements identified in 3.1. For at least five of these elements , this analysis shall include a high-level hazard analysis that takes into consideration potential hardware, software, human, and environmental factors. 3.3 assess sufficiency of existing methods, tools, processes, and regulations. For the safety issues identified in