System-of-systems safety for low-altitude aviation transportation

Low-altitude (LA) transportation is rapidly evolving as a new sector of traditional aviation industry. Specifically, existing aviation safety studies were largely developed under traditional aviation System-of-systems (SoS) architectures, and primarily address system-level risks (human, vehicle, communication-navigation-surveillance, or operational management) with clear system boundaries. As a new SoS, LA SoS may have new emergent risk types and cross-domain cascading risk propagation via new architecture. This paper considers the LA transportation SoS from architecture viewpoint, and analyzes its new characteristics and risk patterns. Therefore, we propose LA SoS safety engineering framework to handle these possible new challenges through architecture design, testing & evaluation, and safety management. Accordingly, our SoS safety engineering framework mainly includes: architecture design (human-automation safety control and digital flight rules), testing & evaluation (traceable design-to-verification and equipment safety requirement), and safety management (monitor-assess-mitigate for in-time risk prediction and mitigation). Our safety engineering framework aims to provide possible solution for this new complex system of LA aviation transportation.