Page 75 - ITU Journal - ICT Discoveries - Volume 1, No. 2, December 2018 - Second special issue on Data for Good

ITU JOURNAL: ICT Discoveries, Vol. 1(2), December 2018

The collection, processing and management of high
volume, complex and highly volatile data, consumes
financial and human resources for a State.
Therefore, SIMS facilitate this problem by being
providing as an online platform. Member States can
use the online SIMS platform to display their data
into meaningful information, as a cost-effective way
to gain direct insights into their stored data without
developing any complex in-house information
technology systems.

Currently, the first phase of SIMS has 12 Member
States who have become participants and
contributors to the system, with already 105 users.

Fig. 3 – The SIMS structure The evolution of SIMS continues gradually with not
only the continuous approach by Member States to
The first phase of SIMS invites States and their become participants, but also with the involvement
service providers to participate in a collaborative of aviation and data experts in the aviation sector,
manner as SIMS participants, while only having to contribute to safety improvement on a global
access to their own information. In the second scale, without any financial benefit. The sole
phase, SIMS allows the participants to securely purpose is to share safety information for analysis
exchange the generated safety information with by using existing and innovative methodologies that
each other. ICAO has developed a supporting legal all States can benefit from. Further to the proactive
framework that addresses data privacy and safety approach, moving to a predictive approach for the
data protection elements for SIMS [12]. prediction of safety performance will be the next
step of transition and research; this will be
As described in previous chapters, Safety conducted by experts in the field and subsequently
Management mandates States to establish the applied to the Safety Information Monitoring
system that captures, stores, aggregates and System with no charge to the participating States.
enables the analysis of safety data and safety
information. In the absence of data, it is not possible 3.4 Integrated Safety Trend Analysis and
to either generate indicators or to conduct analysis Reporting System (iSTARS)
of safety information for the improvement of safety.
Therefore, for the prerequisite for such systems, The integrated Safety Trend Analysis and Reporting
data availabillity is dealt as one of the key objectives System (iSTARS) is a web-based system on the ICAO
of SIMS. In data collection, States and international secure portal (https://www.icao.int/safety/iStars).
organizations mainly collect accident data and its iSTARS provides a quick and convenient interface to
root causes, for example, standard operating a collection of safety and efficiency datasets and
procedures, aircraft maintenance requirements, web applications to make safety, efficiency and risk
aircraft parts, and cabin crew training, on national, analysis. There are currently over 30 different web
regional and international levels. In addition to applications accessible to over 4,700 registered
occurrence data, States collect data via audits and users. The applications were developed to support
inspections in order to monitor the compliance with the analysis and visualization of big aviation data
their safety regulations by the service providers, and to enable data-driven decision making.
which is also known as a compliance-based
approach. Data is not only a prerequisite for SIMS, In the bottom layer of the iSTARS architecture, data
but also for the analysis of safety risks and the is extracted from multiple sources, transformed to a
monitoring of a State’s safety performance. common usable format and loaded into the
MongoDB database. This data could come from
other internal databases, external websites or from
the S3 cloud storage.

© International Telecommunication Union, 2018 53