Comparing bird strike risk assessment methods: a new perspective for safety management

Bird and other wildlife strikes are an ever-increasing concern in the aeronautic industry. Several countries have developed methods to mitigate wildlife strikes, where indexes are valuable tools to reinforce airport wildlife management plans. Nevertheless, an international consensus on the application of a single method is lacking. Mexico follows the international normative, but there is ample room to develop new strategies to approach the wildlife strike phenomena. We evaluate, contrast, and compare three commonly used indexes in three Mexican airports, the heuristic risk assessment, the R index, and the bird strike risk assessment 2 (BRI2). These indexes use different methods to obtain their assessment value; thus, we use the more informative variables to effectively highlight the species scored as problematic to coincide with the species involved in wildlife strikes. The heuristic risk assessment showed risk values only for two airports, while outcomes of the R index and the BRI2 are similar at all airports. All risk and hazard groups calculated presented coincidences with at least one group involved in a wildlife strike. We suggest using the R index for hazard values and the BRI2 for risk values to obtain better and fastest results. Nevertheless, we encourage developing (a) a standardized survey method, (b) a standardized risk and hazard calculation method, and (c) a publicly available national report system for wildlife strikes.