Systems-Based Risk Analysis for the FAA NextGen's Integration of the Communication, Navigation, and Surveillance System of Systems

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is in the transition between the alpha and bravo periods of a long term plan to modernize the National Airspace System (NAS) called NextGen. This plan, currently slated through 2030, sets out to meet four main goals: increase safety, capacity, and efficiency while mitigating environmental impacts of the airspace. One of the many areas of change within NextGen occurs as part of the current Communication, Navigation, and Surveillance (CNS) System of Systems (S-o-S). Currently this system operates semi-autonomously with no explicit dependencies within each system and while it must be used in sync to perform a specific operation, there is no apparent single point of failure for all three systems. Future technologies will move away from this semi-autonomous mode and approach a fully integrated CNS as S-o-S. The lack of opportunities to extensively test these changes to the S-o-S prior to the go-live date creates a need for a way to model and understand possible risks to the S-o-S. This thesis provides a systems-based risk analysis framework for key areas that threaten the operation of the CNS as S-o-S, as well as the safety of the airspace. This thesis will also provide a framework focused on utilizing three different perspectives of a S-o-S, operational, structural, and organization. These different perspectives are used to determine potential risk scenarios and to explore key scenarios that would have the largest negative impact within the CNS. The framework developed in this thesis can be used and applied to other complex emergent Systems of Systems to ensure a systematic and comprehensive risk analysis covering the most critical perspectives of a system. While tradeoff analysis is a key aspect of risk analysis and should not be overlooked in a full risk assessment and management project it is beyond the scope of this thesis. The risk framework builds foundations on which the FAA can make well-informed decisions on the integration of the CNS system of systems within the NextGen Project.