23rd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, 8-13 September, 2002, Toronto, Canada
Paper ICAS 2002-7.10.4

AN AUTOMATED SYSTEM FRAMEWORK FOR PRE-MISSION SUCCESS EVALUATION OF MEDICAL EMERGENCY HELICOPTERS OPERATIONS €“ DEFINED MISSION CAPABILITY SUB-MODULE

A. K. Sinha (1), R. Kusumo (1), P. Hogan (2), K. Laycock (2)
(1) RMIT University, Australia; (2) Air Ambulance Victoria, Australia

Keywords: medical emergency operations, decision support tools, pre-mission success evaluation

Helicopter medical emergency services are required, when time, accessibility and medical attendance are critical factors in life saving. Analysis of the mission to support critical decisions is important for mission success. Presently, pre-mission analysis for decision support are dependent on crew-judgment, and hence, prone to human and machine operation error. A system methodology for a holistic pre-mission analysis has been developed for crew decision support. For holistic analysis, the factors considered in the methodology are operational, human and machine. Due to a small time frame for critical decision-making, the system methodology for pre-mission analysis needs to be automated for time-based accurate decision support. In this paper, the overview of an automated pre-mission success analysis is presented, followed by detailed discussion on the development of ‘Defined Mission Capability Analysis’ (DFCA) sub-module. The DFCA sub-module is designed to identity the capabilities required to ensure mission success.

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