All recorded activity occurs against some kind of plan. Some activities would be able to reuse generic plans. Other activities would need specific planning.
See www.ozrunways.com; preflight checking/planning for australian aviators. Check for NOTAMS, airspace, etc. Maybe even automated preflight checking?
There is probably a standard set of generic procedures, and activities that comply with those procedures might not require aditional planning. They are performed at the operators discression and the activity is recorded after the fact. Changes to these procedures would be subject to safety assessment.
For example, CanberraUAV flys multiple missions most weeks at the CMAC airfield. These usually involve flight testing incremental changes to software, airframes or avionics. These flights comply with the range safety plan of the CMAC site, and the Standard Operating Procedures of the Model Aircraft Association of Australia. They are usually observed by a gallery of experienced aeromodellers and always flown by a suitably qualified safety pilot.
It would be difficult and disruptive to impose manditory planning steps to Standard Operations such as these.
Extraordinary activity is defined as anything outside the bounds of Standard Operations. These require advanced planning, which is subject to safety assessment prior to activity occuring. New standard operations would be subject to equivalent process as extraordinary activities.
The scope of the risk assessment associated with activity planning is greater than safety; it also includes risks related to regulatory compliance, financial, reputation and others. We probably need to link up to a “risk management plan” framework of which safety management is a subset.
Some activities must be very simple (low effort) to record. For example, upload telemetry/telecommand log files along with the absolute minimum of information. To the maximum extend possible, this sort of information management should be handled automatically.
The complicated cases include all the incident, accident and hazard reporting features.
This will not be limited to flight operation activities. Inspection and maintenance of equipment. Maybe even our meeting minutes belong here. Much to elaborate on...
Typically this would be done by a UAS operator, but the safety team would accept reports from anyone. In other words, it might be reported when flight logs were uploaded, or it might be reported independant of uploading flight logs.
A hazard is the potential for an incident or accident. The risk is percieved, the hazard report is simply an issue or problem for the safety team to evaluate, with some potential to improve safety.
The submitter may request that the Hazard report is treated in-confidence. In this situation, the safety team may disclose “lessons learned” and other topics related to the hazard, but keep the specifics of the hazard report private (for example, who reported it and exactly when).
An incident is something that actually happened (at a time and place). Nobody was hurt, nothing was significantly damaged, but a percieved risk was validated by events.
The safety team will investigate every reported incident, using the same sort of analysis as used for more serious accidents. The investigation will generally be conducted internaly (within the Safety Team), without resorting to external parties. Where appropriate, incident investigations may be reviewed by a third party, for example by an aviation safety auditor.
Submitters may request that an incident report is kept confidential. In this case, the details of the incident report will be discussed among the safety team. It may also be shared with appropriate third parties, but it will not be released into the public domain. The safety team may disclose “lessons learned” and other non-specific details, but keep the specifics of the incident report private.
If a submitter nominates that they do not wish for the incident report to be kept private, the safety team may release it into the public domain at their discression,
An accident is an incident with bad consequences. For example, personal injury significant damage to equipment.
The safety team will investigate all reported accidents. As appropriate, they will also forward the accident report to relevant parties and authorities. It may not be possible to agree to keep accident reports confidential, however if requested the safety team can assure maximum possible discretion (as oposed to discussing the accident openly).
Hazards, Incidents and Accidents are reported using a standard form, becuase it prompts the submitter to provide certain details that are considered useful a-priori. Where available, it may be beneficial to include additional data to augment the information in the standard form. For example telemetry logs, video and still images, audio, diagrams, journalism references, additional witness statements, etc. Unlike the fields of the standard form, these are essentially unstructured data.
At the time a HIA report is submitted, the submitter may attach media files directly. For example, attach them to an email that they send to an HIA report submission inbox, or use upload features of the online HIA reporting tool. Where practical to do so, this would usually be the preferred method.
At the time a HIA report is submitted, the submitter may include hyperlink references to media hosted elseware, such as youtube videos or droneshare telemetry. Where this media is password protected, the sumitter would need to provide access credentials.
In some situations this might be the most practical way to provide supplimentary data, for example where a significantly large volume of data were involved, or where the origional source material is not available to the submitter. However, the downside of hyperlinks to remotely hosted data is that it may cease to be available at some point in the future, making future reviews or audits more difficult.
Either at the request of the safety team or unprompted, a HIA report submitter may chose to augment a HIA report with supplimentary data after the report has been submitted. This may be linked media or directly attached files.
Anonymous reporting has a crucial role in aviation safety. The functional requirements are simple - anyone can report a hazard or incident (concern) anonymously, and these will be (at the very least) reviewed and considered by the safety management team.
If the incident involved loss of life or other very serious consequences, and the Australian Transport Safety Beuro (or equivalent authority in foreign jurisdictions) are required to investigate, then the safety team could be mandated by law to release all relevent information to the investigators. This probably means they need to be able to break anonaminity.