The FAA is continuing to explore how it can incorporate artificial intelligence into the National Airspace System, which consists of controlled and uncontrolled airspace it oversees.
Earlier this week, the FAA released the results of a market study titled “Analytics for NAS Safety,” seeking information on “existing capabilities for advanced analytics using modern artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to improve aviation safety.” According to the post, the posting is intended to help the FAA improve its safety information systems and incorporate analytics from commercially available tools.
“The FAA envisions a new safety analytics system that will significantly expand and accelerate insights from current and additional data sources to comprehensively understand causal factors of safety events and help predict high-risk operations and environments,” the FAA said. “The final phase will build on commercially available analytical tools that are widely used by a significant number of companies and organizations to similarly improve operational safety or reduce operational errors.”
The FAA, which did not respond to a request for comment at press time, is also concerned about potential challenges around data privacy and data variability.
The post comes as the Department of Transport has been gradually exploring the application of artificial intelligence and has published several use cases as part of the Department of Transport's AI Use Case Inventory.
Previous FedScoop reporting has highlighted the myriad obstacles the FAA faces in trying to adopt the technology, even as the Biden administration encourages a government-wide effort to modernize the system using AI.
“Aviation is a safety-critical industry and sector, and so industry stakeholders have generally been slow to adopt AI models and tools for decision-making and forecasting tasks,” Saeed AM Shihab, an assistant professor of aeronautical engineering at Kent State University, told FedScoop in April. “While AI models are great when they work well, one misprediction or one inaccurate classification of a use case can compromise the safety of flight operations.”
