We’re on the brink of a new era in aviation.
NASA’s System-Wide Safety (SWS) project is developing innovative data solutions to assure safe, rapid, and repeatable access to a transformed National Airspace System.
SWS evaluates how the aerospace industry and aircraft modernization impacts safety. This integrated safety approach uses the latest technology to address potential operational and design risks.
Our future in aviation will be digital and data-driven, so we’re developing innovative solutions that uses that technology to address risks.
By ensuring that aviation safety is a priority during this digital transformation, the SWS project seeks to ensure future aviation is even safer than today. Integrating data in this new digital world allows us to have strategic insight into making aviation safer.
The SWS project is part of the Airspace Operations and Safety Program within NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.
SWS performs high-risk research and development and is focused on exploring, discovering, and understanding the impact on safety from technical advancements in aviation and any associated emerging operations.
To improve the efficiency of flight, access to airspace, and expansion of aviation services, SWS supports the transformation of the National Airspace System by identifying the largest technical barriers to safety.
The primary customer and stakeholder for SWS is the U.S. aviation community, including the flying public, aircraft and avionics manufacturers, aircraft owners and operators, and other government agencies.
Through SWS’s research involving emerging, unpiloted aircraft and urban operations, the project also will benefit the non-flying public by helping to reduce risk to people, property, and infrastructure on the ground.
Created in 2018, SWS has two primary goals:
- Explore, discover, and understand how safety could be affected by the growing complexity of advanced aviation systems.
- Develop and demonstrate the research tools, innovative technologies and operational methods that will proactively mitigate potential risks to maintain the aviation industry’s unparalleled safety record.
Project Leadership
Project Manager
Dr. Kyle Ellis
Deputy Project Manager
Summer Brandt
Associate Project Manager
Dr. Wendy Okolo
Associate Project Manager
Michael Vincent
Project Scientist
Dr. Paul Miner
Senior Technical Advisor for Aviation Safety
Dr. Lance Prinzel
Senior Technical Advisor for Autonomy
Dr. Joseph Coughlan
Senior Technical Advisor for Assurance
Dr. Natasha Neogi
Safety Liaison
Dr. Misty Davies
