PRELIMINARY RESULTS FROM A EUROPEAN SAFETY R&D PROGRAM Barry Kirwan, Eric Perrin, Catherine Gandolfi, Rachael Gordon, Tony Joyce, Fabrice Drogoul, Yann Kermarquer, Brian Hickling, Adrian Gizdavu, Andrea Pechhacker, Garfield Dean, Paul Humphreys, Veronique Begault EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre, Centre de Bois des Bordes, BP 15, F-91222 CEDEX, France Background Eurocontrol is the Agency concerned with the safety of air navigation in European airspace. It works with most European countries to help improve Air Traffic Management (ATM) and harmonize best practices, including those relating to safety. The research arm of Eurocontrol is based in its Experimental Centre (the EEC) near Bretigny, South of Paris, where future ATM concepts, including new airspace designs and tools to help augment controller performance and ATM efficiency, are explored. Research there is coordinated with Eurocontrol Headquarters (EHQ) in Brussels, as well as the Eurocontrol training Institute in Luxembourg, and Eurocontrol’s operational ATM centre in Maastricht. Following two severe accidents which involved significant ATM contributions, namely the runway incursion in Milan airport in Italy [1] and the mid-air collision near Ueberlingen in Germany [2], the role of safety received a new focus in its agenda. A High Level European Action Group on ATM Safety (called ‘AGAS’) was set up to consider the actions needed to prevent recurrence of these and similar accidents. These deliberations, over the period of approximately nine months, yielded eight ‘threads’ of action, which were put into a Strategic Safety Action Plan [3]. This paper concerns one of these threads, the one concerned with Safety Research and Development (SRD). Whereas the other seven threads were primarily concerned with relatively short-term measures (e.g. guidance on runway safety, safety regulation, safety assessment, safety nets improvement, etc.), the SRD program was more medium-long term in its focus. This paper therefore outlines the safety R&D program and objectives, and the results obtained at this point in time, roughly half- way through its initial timeline. Safety R&D Plan & Objectives The SRD Plan [4] was based around eight principles of safety I - ATM must become a learning organisation Methods to collect data now exist, and data collection is occurring in many ANSPs. Safety learning mechanisms now need development. II - ATM must have suitable methods with which to anticipate and protect itself against risks ATM needs to adapt risk assessment and management methods from other industries and develop new ones where required. III - Safety must be built in at the early stages of ATM system design, right through to implementation Safety lessons and information need to be fed into the design process throughout the design life cycle, from concept development to transition to operations. IV - ATM must improve safety in key near-term risk areas 1