This paper describes a risk-based strategy for meeting the challenge of reducing system accident rates using air transportation as an example, with particular emphasis on the oversight role. The strategy is based on decades of systems engineering progress in assuring the safety, security and reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. The strategy initially introduces basic system safety techniques into a reduced set of complementary modeling approaches that represent a portion of the system under consideration. Over time, the strategy is to gradually expand the scope to include additional elements of the system. As the scope expands, new hazards are introduced and addressed, new interactions are defined, and new system behaviors described. This paper describes how complementary models and analysis, based on a unique concept called Red and Blue Thinking, can facilitate the development of an improved risk management system that would enhance the ability to both assess system compliance with existing regulations and identify additional prioritized improvement opportunities that have the potential for reducing accident rates. A Red-Blue Thinking approach integrated into a top-down to bottoms-up decision-making process also assures that positive strides to continually improve system safety can be made while minimizing the risk that remedial measures may actually degrade safety. The strategy offers greater flexibility, improved defensibility, and improved understanding of the system risks, thus enabling a cost-effective systemic approach to reducing system accident rates.
