Capturing emerging complex interactions: Safety analysis in air traffic management

The future development of air traffic management (ATM), set by the ATM 2000+ Strategy, involves a structural revision of ATM processes, a new ATM concept and a system approach for the ATM network. This requires ATM services to go through significant structural, operational and cultural changes that will contribute towards the ATM 2000+ Strategy. Moreover, from a technology viewpoint, future ATM services will employ new systems forming the emergent ATM architecture underlying and supporting the European Commission's Single European Sky Initiative. Introducing safety relevant systems in ATM contexts requires us to understand the risk involved in order to mitigate the impact of possible failures. This paper is concerned with some limitations of safety analysis with respect to operational aspects of introducing new systems (functionalities).