The costs of avoidable disruption

Many of the costs associated with disruptive events have traditionally been seen as just “the cost of doing business”, but new technologies on the market are slowly changing this perception and helping to limit some of these costs. In this economic environment, any area where costs can be saved is critical; even small percentage gains can make major financial differences.

However, the question remains: "How does an operator reach the point at which they can confidently act on a disruptive event to help prevent loss?“

Well, this requires a multitude of factors working simultaneously: faster access to accurate and relevant information; the ability to access "in the moment" situational intelligence; country, airport, and airspace data that reflects the current environment; the ability to understand how this affects operations; streamlined ways to share the intel with relevant stakeholders; and efficient decisionmaking.

Without trust in the data and assessments, airlines may not be able to make informed decisions, which can have serious consequences. Therefore, building trust in the information and intelligence systems is crucial for successful operations.

Limitations of existing risk management

Traditional sources of risk information have, until recently, never been designed to consider rapidly changing environments or provide situational intelligence; the very techniques used are the opposite of dynamic. Often relying on sanitised classified information, manual Google searches, or government advisories and notices.

Operators often don’t have access to the information they need to act quickly when, or preferably before, events occur, resulting in cancellations, diversions, and, in extreme cases, the loss of aircraft. As seen last year with the Ukrainian invasion, there was poor planning and a lack of accurate information about ‘when’ the invasion was going to happen. Many services offering intelligence to the aviation industry wrongly stated that an invasion was unlikely in the days before it happened!

Osprey’s Chief Intelligence Officer, Matthew Borie, comments “Conflict Zone reporting is as much about cutting through the political and diplomatic influences and removing bias, looking at actual risk separate from conflict zone regulatory notices. In the year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Osprey has generated a solution that provides dynamic, timely and accurate data-led security risk assessments for flights near the Russia-Ukraine conflict zone. ”

We can also see that significant incidents around the globe happen frequently, with smaller incidents happening every day.

Leveraging OSINT to manage risk

This is why the next generation of security risk intelligence is taking a different approach…

Leveraging a combination of open-source intelligence, the gold standard in intelligence circles for fast and reliable information on emerging events, with technology that can “filter out the noise” and categorise events to assist with the identification of patterns and anomalies indicating a disruptive event, technology can start to ‘predict’ and forecast events that impact the industry.

The Osprey Solution

In order to close this gap and deliver the next generation of data-driven, aviation-specific risk management, Osprey was established. Leveraging machine and deep-learning, open-source data, and industry-leading knowledge to enable more secure and safe aviation.

The Osprey system monitors hundreds of thousands of open sources worldwide in more than 60 languages every few minutes. The "noise" is then filtered out by AI algorithms, leaving only the most accurate, pertinent, and aviation-specific information available. Our team then verify each event before it is entered into the database, ensuring its accuracy and educating the AI to build a constantly improving system. This generates a high-fidelity, dynamic digital model of the global risk to aviation, using open-source data.

Machine and deep-learning models use our years of historical data to identify new anomalies and patterns that could indicate a risk to aviation anywhere in the world, usually days, weeks, or even months in advance. Osprey analysts apply an analytical and operational overlay to explain how this impacts operations and what can be done about it, leaving more time to plan for the disruptive event and avoid costs.

It is exciting to see new technology within the aviation risk space flourish and advance because we really are getting to the point where we can start to predict or forecast risk events in a similar way to weather patterns! – Andrew Nicholson, CEO, Osprey Flight Solutions