B.5 System-Wide Safety Project (SWS) | NNH19ZEA001N SWS

Opportunity Information: Apply for NNH19ZEA001N SWS

NASA Headquarters is soliciting research proposals under Amendment 6 to the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) Research Opportunities in Aeronautics (ROA) 2019 NASA Research Announcement (NRA), specifically for the System-Wide Safety Project (SWS) (Funding Opportunity Number NNH19ZEA001N). The opportunity is part of NASA's broader aeronautics research and is categorized as science and technology and other research and development, with awards expected to be made through cooperative agreements (CFDA 43.002). Eligibility is listed as unrestricted, meaning proposals may be submitted by any qualified applicant type, including academia, industry, nonprofits, and other entities, as long as they meet the solicitation requirements.

The SWS project is centered on protecting and strengthening aviation's strong safety record as the overall aviation ecosystem changes rapidly. NASA highlights that modern aviation is becoming more complex due to advanced systems intended to improve efficiency (for example, increasingly automated flight-deck functions, data-driven operations, and more integrated airspace procedures). At the same time, the number and variety of aircraft are growing, including both piloted and unpiloted vehicles, serving a wider range of operators and customers. NASA's first stated goal is to study and understand how these shifts in complexity, scale, and diversity can introduce new safety risks or change existing risk profiles across the system, not just for individual aircraft but across operations, infrastructure, and stakeholders.

NASA's second goal is more solution-oriented: to develop and demonstrate research tools, innovative technologies, and operational methods that can proactively reduce or manage those emerging risks. The emphasis is on anticipating hazards earlier, improving the quality and timeliness of safety-relevant information, and enabling interventions that prevent incidents rather than simply analyzing them after the fact. In practical terms, the SWS vision is a future aviation safety ecosystem with expanded safety awareness, better access to relevant data, integrated analysis capabilities, stronger real-time hazard detection and alerting, decision-support functions for operators and authorities, and, where appropriate, automated safety mitigation strategies.

This solicitation seeks proposals in three subtopic areas intended to complement NASA's internal work and align with related efforts across industry, government, and academia. First, NASA is looking for a demonstration of an integrated, domain-specific In-time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS). This subtopic points toward a capability that can bring together safety-relevant data streams and analyses in an operationally meaningful way, supporting timely safety management actions as conditions evolve. Second, the solicitation calls for the development of novel, predictive, online, and automated analytics-based risk assessment tools. The key ideas here are forward-looking risk estimation (not just retrospective reporting), automation, and the ability to operate in near real time, suggesting interests in advanced analytics approaches that can continuously assess risk as new data arrive. Third, NASA requests development of trusted contingency management methods, which generally refers to approaches for managing off-nominal situations safely and reliably, including how systems, operators, and procedures can respond when disruptions, anomalies, or unexpected hazards occur. The word "trusted" signals that NASA is concerned not only with technical performance, but also with reliability, validation, assurance, and operational acceptability of the methods in safety-critical contexts.

Proposals were due by September 21, 2020 at 5:00 PM Eastern, and submissions were required to be made electronically through NSPIRES (https://nspires.nasaprs.com). The posting indicates the opportunity was created on August 3, 2020. While the source text does not list an award ceiling or expected number of awards, it clearly frames the intent as funding collaborative R and D efforts that integrate with and extend NASA's ongoing system-wide aviation safety research, with an emphasis on demonstrations, predictive analytics, and dependable contingency management capabilities.

• The NASA Headquarters in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "B.5 System-Wide Safety Project (SWS)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 43.002.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2020-08-03.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2020-09-21. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted.

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