IBSC Athens Reports

Dear Brigadier General Mr. Kampianakis, dear Mrs. Mitakou, dear Dr. Karamanos, dear hosts, dear participants, dear friends: is it a great honour for me to give the opening speech of this 27th Meeting of the International Bird Strike Committee. Our tradition says that this chairman´s report should be a summary of the activities since the last meeting. I will slightly modify the traditional approach. This is my last meeting as your chairman and so I like to overview all my 7 years.

If my talk was a lecture I would have chosen the title:

Understanding The Birds, Understanding Ourselves

1.
I begin with considering our “span-of-control” while dealing with the birdstrike problem, and will conclude that after all bird control should be considered as an art.

7 years ago, in Stara Lesna, Slowakia, I took over the IBSC chairmanship from John Thorpe, our present honorary chairman, also here in the audience. At the end of that meeting in Slovakia I was asked to tell something about the now almost famous Eindhoven crash of 1996.

Slide1

As some of you will remember it was for me a very emotional moment to talk about this sad accident wherein 34 people died: the Belgian crew and almost a whole Dutch army orchestra. I was heavily involved in the initial investigation. 183 dead Starlings were found at the runway. I found bird remains at the cockpit windows and after one month microscopic investigation in the Zoological Museum of Amsterdam it was proven that 3 out of 4 engines contained Starling remains. Two years later, around the Slovakia meeting, the political intrigues were at a maximum. And it took until last year, so almost nine years since tha accident, to remove the

Slide2

blame initially put upon key people in the chain of mishaps. In particular the on-scene-commander of the fire control has suffered a lot.

I was on the site at day two, interrogating witnesses, debating with two investigation committees, one from Belgium (the owner of the Hercules aircraft), one from Holland (the owner of Eindhoven air force base). It appeared to be a very complicated chain of mishaps. The combination of a whole series of mistakes made it a very tense investigation process. It was obvious that from the beginning a lot of arguing was influenced by the unspoken wish to blame someone.

To me it was clear that nobody was particularly responsible for the accident, but also that many persons in the chain of defences could have prevented the accident to happen. We probably all know the famous Swiss cheese model of Prof. James Reason,

Slide 3

describing complicated accidents and the philosophy of prevention strategies. In this particular case there was the following series of mishaps:
1) the attractiveness of the runway shoulder (the farmer was haying during operations);
2) a full day of problems with young Starlings, just arrived from Middle Europe, not alerting the bird control unit neither the ATC tower to service the late arrival of the Hercules correctly;
3) the impossibility to see and judge the bird situation from the tower (at a distance of over 1.5 km);
4) the abnormal curved approach bringing the birds into a panic flight;
5) the wrong landing decision by the young pilot (doorstart);
6) the late arrival of fire control and medical support;
7) the lacking knowledge of the number of persons on board;
Etcetera: this is not an authorised report.

Studying Reason´s approach to multifactorial accidents, I wonder: does a elaborated set of defences by groups of people weaken the individual tendency to take responsibility? How to counter that effect???

The bird strike problem seems to me an ideal test issue for judging whether an airport staff is safety minded in general. A laconic attitude often follows lack of knowledge. But also overconfidence of intelligent people might be a serious cause of a laconic approach. Birds do not always follow human logic. Therefore, bird strike prevention needs a healthy mix of appreciation of practical work and theoretical support. Birds appear often out of the blue. But well informed and eager bird controllers develop a certain capacity to foresee problems.
A certain predictability is hidden under the surface, which might be fished up by applied scientists, provided they appreciate watching and understanding the BCU behaviour. Or in other words, appreciating practical people. IBSC meetings should seek for the healthy mix of practice and theory in order to develop robust decision support systems.

At a safe airport tricky events should be scarce. Consequently, innocent incidents must be exploited. Near miss bird strikes should be adored because of the learning moments they contain. And we should begin with considering bird control as an ART, or, something depending on the magic mechanism of intuition.

That bird strikes not always follow logic is indicated in the next series of slides:

Slide 4

This scheme seeks a balance between almost opposite forces, the strive after profit and safety. Too much profit orientation will easily lead to the conclusion that small birds should be neglected. Profit orientation might even result in the ignorance of flocks of geese as long as governmental authorities do not enforce regulations.

Slide 5

On the opposite a safety oriented officer might break his mind on how to cope with the swifts and swallows gathering above the concrete hunting for insects. He certainly will have great problems in raising funds for a professional study. Paradoxially, by formally pushing this, the result might be that the profit oriented airport manager easily gets the funds for the monitoring the geese. The eagerly awaited swift study is abandoned, the contacts with the frustrated scientist are lost.

But the issue of prioritising might not be that easy! Let us return to Eindhoven.

Slide 6

Only two weeks ago, two Storks appeared at the runway. One was killed by a Citation business jet taking off. The collision resulted in a dent in the aircraft skin and almost no delay. The mate of the Stork did not want to leave the airport, in an attempt to guard his girlfriend (photo zoom in).

Slide 7

Do we blame the Eindhoven tower personnel and/or bird control in 1996 for not noticing a flock of 500 small starlings in the grass besides the runway that initiated a disaster??? Or do we blame the same officials anno 2005 for not noticing and/or removing the two Storks clearly visible upon the runway, who only caused a little dent and almost no delay??????

2.
(Learning from occurrences or blame free reporting)

This brings me to the crucial dilemma of blame free reporting.

Slide 8

Let us enter the hospital and watch the behaviour of surgeons and nurse-assistants during an operation. Can a medical doctor survive under the pressure of never making an mistake or never moving his knife wrongly? Or do we accept that mistakes are inevitable and try to learn from them by openly disputing all occurrences? Shouldn´t we appreciate ALL near misses? And do this openly, albeit within the borders of the operation room? Shouldn´t we try to develop procedures and a domain language by allowing all team members to speak out irrespective of their rank? How do we cultivate this, while at the same time not loosing our sharpness?

Nowadays Crew Research Management (CRM) is a highly debated issue in the cockpit too. A elaborated system of checklists has evolved. The sophistication of this checklist system should also include the use of bird incidents. Or to put it differently: occurrences are needed to keep the system sharp. Or even one step further: we should highly appreciate the willingness of crewmembers to admit that something almost went wrong in order to understand that sometimes an accident really will happen. In case of a bird strike, a few centimeters should NOT always automatically make the difference between liability and ignorence.

Slide 9

One of the Warsaw resolutions was that IBSC supports mandatory bird strike reporting to ICAO. However, how to avoid the punitive aspect and to promote the educative element? This afternoon we will discuss the issue in detail!

3.
(The spatial limitations of zero tolerance)

We can easily blame the birds; with a few exceptions they will not setup counter attacks (as often suggested in jokes on the bird strike problem) BUT they have the natural capacity to habituate. Due to super abundance a lot of culture following bird species, such as many heavy wetland birds, are extremely keen to find unoccupied niches close to human activity. Airports often appear to be very attractive. The obvious first reaction of safety personnel is, of course, to launch a heavy attack: zero tolerance! This is particularly understandable where birds dare to sit on runways. Last year FOD-radar became available, capable to detect a two inch bolt at one km. Detecting a bird with this new equipment should not be any problem. Also heat picture cameras can see the warm bird bodies easily at long distances. Thus, there should not be any bird on the runway before an air plane is cleared to take off, even in the darkest night. On the runway zero tolerance is a realistic possibility!

However, imagine a flock of migratory birds such as Lapwings, that did arrive at night and noticed a group of conspecifics in the grass along the runway. These new birds will land and join the local flock in order to find a stop-over opportunity for fattening up for the continuation of their migratory flight. When the unprepared bird control unit suddenly discovers this danger the following morning, it might react in panic and create panic among the birds. Scaring by shooting a few flock members but leaving the majority erratically flying around could easily create an extreme hazardous situation in the take-off area. At some distance of the runway zero-tolerance becomes soon impossible, and the attempt to apply this approach may become contra productive, especially near a runway in active use. Watching the birds in order to learn the peculiarities of their behaviour becomes a necessary part of the bird control strategy.

Here we must discriminate between a quiet single runway airfield and a major multi runway aerodrome. While we may in the first situation adapt operations somewhat to the birds, this becomes almost impossible at the big and busy airport. Moreover, working with a team platform personnel increases the need of developing a co-ordinated effort. Nowadays, nice bird logging equipment including GPS is becoming mature. The next step is to integrate bird control actions optimally into the general operational platform control and ATC. Wireless communicating mobile systems offer promising extras such as help from all human eyes available. But too much information may end up in chaos. Thorough re-analysis of optimal bird control strategies is therefore a prerequisite in these modern times.

4.
(Recognising new patterns in bird flight by modelling known ones)

An extra benefit of automatic bird logging are the possibilities to build up much better databases about bird presence and behaviour. This may include the monitoring of the effects evoked by our scaring actions which we also easily can plot on the spot in the mobile computing device. To digibetic grey hare persons like myself this may seem superfluous luxury, but it isn´t! Modern modelling techniques are opening up new possibilities. While performing bird control operations, the mobile input may generate advice on the spot. A lot of bird behaviour is much more organised than we think. The historic data that we create elucidates patterns with great predictive power. During this conference we will discuss the scientific challenges of modelling the different forms of bird flying activities above and around airfields as well as, ultimately, the juridical necessity to use the new knowledge and techniques.

5.
(The obvious tool sine qua non: radar)

To the birds airfields are open areas. Birds on the move may suddenly land at the property as it is an open, often green area, mostly without much human activity apart from aircraft. Besides monitoring their arrivals and departures by counting bird numbers at the ground, we also may detect the birds in flight. Already half a century ago it has been shown that systematically detecting birds by radar is feasible at all possible scales (Slide 10). With long range surveillance radars we can track high level bird migration at distances up to 150 km. () Airport surveillance radars can take over the tracks at 30 to 50 km, and downward until some tens of meters above the airfield, while small mobile shipradars may be used to monitor low level bird movements up to 5 km almost at ground level. Algorithms to separate bird echoes from rain-, ground- and wave- clutter have been developed.

Slides 10 & Slide11

Bird radars are at the brink of becoming commercially available, while the latest software solutions and off-the-shelve computing power will reduce prices. Even quantification combined with identification of bird species by means of FMCW radar is coming within range. HOWEVER, biological constraints hamper the process of calibration of measurements, validation of models and thus standardisation. Challenging times for ornithologists! And confusing times for ATC personnel, not yet being operationally prepared to handle bird tracks.

We will devote the full Thursday on these bird movement matters and recognise the need to mix local airport bird control with en route bird migration information. In the past this was only a military affair because of the enormous danger of bird strikes by fast low level flying jet fighters. Now we realise that civil flight safety also may profit, if not yet via ATC, than certainly via more sophisticated bird control units.

In the mean time the military applications should not be forgotten. Major migratory bottleneck areas such as Panama, Gibraltar, Israel and Singapore should become focus points for the development of a world wide Bird Avoidance Model.

Slide 12

On Thursday we will see some of the results achieved in a big research project of the University of Amsterdam, while the US representatives will explain a new strategic plan for the next decade. The challenge of combining models with online weather data, field observations and bird migration indices from radar networks might even result in an important spin-off for climate research. Migratory birds appear capable of monitoring in an unknown manner large scale and long term air pressure oscillations related to climate fluctuations and seem to have a certain plasticity enabling them adapt.

Slide 13

More knowledge about the tiny nocturnal passerine migrants, which we now can measure and identify almost automatically by radar, may provide essential cues for predicting the mass movements of more dangerous heavy birds during the day ().

6.
(The obvious ultimate goal: effective signalling to the birds)

Finally, refined observations of bird behaviour in front of approaching and departing aircraft, as conducted by the Irish team, have revealed that birds are better in avoiding aircraft than many people thought. It explains why we find lower bird strike rates than we should find given frontal area and speed of aircraft and measurements of bird densities in the flight path. But it also explains why quieter aircraft are more vulnerable. Again, a challenging task should be laid on the desk of ornithologists: how to maximise the behavioural response of the birds to aircraft. AND, how to optimise bird scaring: when and where doing nothing, and when and where (and how long before a departure or arrival) doing what type of scaring action.

The ultimate measure would be the design of effective on-board warning signals. I often wonder why not more refined studies are being initiated following the claim that landing lights reduce bird strike rates. Hopefully, there will be new attempts due to the problem of bird victims to large wind turbines. Bird tracking devices in front of these obstacles seem to provide the first results. A joint effort of students of both types of collision problems should be welcomed.

7.
(Level Playing Field philosophy
Global rules about local differences)

ICAO wants us to tell how to apply in a fare manner global criteria for auditing bird control efforts. Biodiversity, however, implies that success full bird species around the globe find a multitude of ways to survive near humans. Consequently, best practices at one airfield will not always be applicable at another. And we have to accept the historically grown situation that certain airports are situated very unluckily. The only way-out is that every airport will be evaluated according to its relative bird density compared to that of its vicinity. Where habitat modification is not effective other less preventive measures should be applied, with adaptation of operations as a last resort. How to make the appropriate authority in the airport vicinity legally responsible for generating bird flights into the flight path of aircraft FOLLOWS ornithological explorations.

Let me quickly summarize the seven steps in my talk

Slide 14

1. Bird control is an Art
2. Blame free reporting is a Must
3. Zero tolerance has spatial and temporal limitations
4. Modeling existing knowledge elucidates new insights
5. Remotely sensing bird flight is not a technical problem anymore but
an ornithological one
6. On board signalling towards birds in flight is the obvious ultimate
step
7. Global ICAO questions need local answers (LPF)

These statements may have looked a littlebit a series of open doors. Yes, indeed, the bird strike problem is easily explained… But these easy theories about soft feathers do not solve gently the hard fact about bird strikes. Quiet aircraft, increasing numbers of birds weighing over four pounds and tougher ICAO regulations will transform the bird strike problem into a headache issue, especially where airports adjoin nature reserves. Strategic alliances with local conservationists provide a way out.

During this conference we will dispute several constitutional options for IBSC. Given the three ICAO standards adopted on the 23rd of November 2003, shortly after our Warsaw meeting, we have to face the problem how to remain an fully independent discussion platform. The steering committee decided to create a lot of space for discussion in the form of Round Table Discussions. Make sure you bring in your opinion, in order to finalise this meeting with a democratic decision making plenary meeting at Friday. But do not forget to enjoy the stay in this remarkable historic city!

Thank you!

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Report from the Statistics Working Group - Arie Dekker

At the Warsaw meeting, John Thorp as vice-chairman of the working group, mainly involved with civil statistics, agreed to collect civil bird strike data for the years 2000 up to 2004 and present a summary of this at this meeting. Although he approached twenty-nine European aviation authorities for data, almost none responded. This lack of response led to his decision to not further pursue this action. So in this meeting we will have no summary presented of civil bird strike statistics from a collection of nations. Although supported by the Air Force Flight Safety Committee Europe and agreed on in a standard NATO agreement, the collection of military bird strike data for EURBASE was not a spontaneous matter either.

Shortly after the Warsaw meeting, I sent all of the members the progress report and the analysis of bird species as was presented at the Warsaw meeting and asked for new contributions. Again, there were no contributions from the military flight safety departments, I think I approached twenty-four. In spring 2004 I again approached all flight safety departments and again asked for data to be included in the analysis planned for this meeting. When this failed again, I e-mailed known contact persons, mostly from the “IBSC family”. This was successful and yielded data for a number of countries for up to 2003. So EURBASE is quite up-to-date now and for several countries I also have data for 2004. I was able to provide the analysis on military bird strikes yesterday. Scattered over several sessions of this meeting there were another thirteen papers presented in which statistics played a significant role. Overall I conclude that there are quite a lot of papers about statistics and at the same time there is quite a lot of trouble in collecting the data for communal databases.

The papers presented on statistics covered a wide range, from descriptive statistics for airfields, nations and air forces to specific analysis of the resistance of turbine-powered aircraft to multiple bird strikes. Also papers dealing with history dating back to 1923 up to the future when mandatory reporting in Europe is imminent. During the meeting there was also much attention for the need for reliable bird strike information, quantitative and anecdotal, how to obtain this information (mandatory, electronic, other means) and the agreement needed on definitions as used in the EU directive 2003/42 on mandatory reporting.

Following the contribution from Sorcha Sheehy from Ireland on the bird strike syndrome, there was some discussion on the identification of bird remains since an alarming high proportion of the bird strike reports still do not have information on bird species involved, which I think is a shame. Despite the availability of several, often not expensive, techniques most countries’ aviation authorities do not actively promote the use of them - the exception being the USA Federal Aviation Authority who recently acquired a DNA sequencer, thus actively working to increase the identification of USA civil bird strikes. This more or less summarises what we have done between Warsaw and this meeting on bird strike statistics.

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Report from the Aerodromes Working Group - Jean-Luc Briot

During this meeting we are focussing on the most important point - improvement of ICAO ANNEX 14, the improvement of the Airport Service Manual Part 3 Bird Control and Reduction. Some IBSC members like me, John Allan, Richard Dolbeer, etc were contacted by ICAO over a month ago and ICAO proposed to create an IBSC advisory group in order to prepare a draft of this modification concerning ANNEX 14 and the bird control and reduction manual so we maybe will meet with Mr. Rao later and I propose that this working group recommends four points:

1. IBSC members are requested to contact their civil aviation authority in order to propose that ICAO adopt as minimum best practice the standards for aerodrome bird control discussed and approved during this meeting. These standards should also be recommended and implemented at military airfields.
2. Laser equipment can be useful as an additional tool on civil and military aerodromes to reduce bird strikes occurring on the runways during low visibility conditions especially at night.
3. Long grass management doesn’t only mean vegetation more than 20cm high, it also means very dense grass so that rodents cannot be detected or caught by a bird of prey.
4. Before introducing new grass species as a bird deterrent on the airfield, it must be checked that it doesn’t have any negative impact on the existing eco-system. Strong co-operation with the Natural Protection Authority is highly recommended.

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Report from the Behaviour & Ecology Working Group - Tom Kelly

Obviously behaviour and ecology continue to be a major theme in relation to bird hazard management and I think one of the emerging themes of this meeting was that behaviour is a very important factor whether or not a bird strike takes place. On the ecological front obviously climate change is an emerging theme and the ecological and behavioural sciences meet in, for example, the description of overflying behaviour, population dynamics, the behaviour and populations of birds in the vicinity of aerodromes and now the ready availability of radar to look at the pattern of overflying at night. So, what is emerging is a 3D picture, in cases of civil airports, of the numbers of birds over the runway, what they are doing on the runway, when they are there and so forth. In a way, a new picture is emerging and new possibilities are going to come from this.

In relation to climate change, I think it’s fair to say that there are a few people who do not accept that it is taking place, what direction it’s going is not that easy to determine because there is quite a bit of fluctuation. What it does appear to have an effect on is the mix of species in and around airfields and therefore the mix of species that are likely to be struck and also on the length of the breeding seasons and perhaps on different patterns of population dynamic behaviour between multi and single brooded species. We know for a fact that the wood pigeon in Ireland is being struck earlier, perhaps a month or six weeks earlier than it has been in the nineties and this is an important problem because that bird species is increasing. I believe due to the fact that the vegetation growing season is changing and the amount of vegetation is increasing, this is a theme that emerged from informal discussions with many people at European Airports, but it is not getting to the surface and we need some kind of concentration on making sure that people are monitoring these things.

Another interesting theme was the ultra low frequency sound work that was done by CSL and the fact that there is the possibility of developing an inaudible distress call system and that I think is something for the future.

In relation to avoidance behaviour, there is no question that birds avoid aircraft and that the aircraft is something that scares them very, very clearly. In fact it is the most effective scaring method of all because the aircraft has another signal, the bird knows if it gets near the aircraft it will be killed so they deliberately and most obviously avoid aircraft.

A theme that came up at Warsaw was largely due to Paul Eschenfelder asking the question “What do aircraft do in the air when it meets a flock of birds in the air?” and Richard Dolbeer presented a very interesting poster on this in Baltimore and to summarise it very briefly, there are data which I think amounted to about 600 records, something like that, showed that above 500 feet when an aircraft meets a flock of birds most of the birds will dive and the logical extrapolation is that the aircraft should go up rather than going down to avoid the flock. Below 500 feet the picture is less clear, some birds go down but it is less clear. This is an important field as well and we did mention it in Warsaw to gather informal observations from pilots about what happens when they encounter a flock of birds at different altitudes and the paper by Richard Dolbeer at Baltimore was a very important paper.

Using an analysis of injury I think we are starting to see certain patterns emerging as well. The pattern of injury in bird strikes is serious damage to the ventral surface and incidentally it is important to point out that the bird may look perfect but when you do the necessary dissection what you’ve got inside is a very, very severe series of traumatic injuries. The important thing to bear in mind is that the bird may look perfect and an important thing to check is the humorous and the radius, in particular the humorous. You will find in the upper bone of the arm that these are frequently broken but you may not see that unless you actually palpate the humorous to find out that they have been broken. People mention owls in particular, they may look perfect when they have been hit by an aircraft but when you do the necessary dissections you will find that both of the humouri have been broken and that the keel has been smashed in and the liver and spleen etc are seriously damaged. Although there may be no detectable difference at present between the motor car and bird strike injuries I think it is something that we are going to continue to pursue using more advanced statistics to separate these things out.

In relation to the overflying of runways this again is a methodology that has now become clarified and I know that some airports are interested in taking this theme up. One advance that the Dublin team put out in Gavin Fennessy’s paper is that the time over the runway is important - not the speed of crossing the runway - and that ties in with foraging behaviour of birds including foraging on the runway and the vigilance behaviour, how vigilant they are in the face of an aircraft coming up to them, while in the case of crows in particular ‘cashing behaviour’ – where they are hiding food in the grasslands along the margins of runways. We know for example that kestrels have very low vigilance for aircraft and they can keep hovering until it’s too late. Similarly we have found with black-headed gulls that if there are earthworms on the runway, they will fly down the runway but not land and their head is in vertical mode looking straight down at the material and that seems to reduce their capacity to detect and avoid aircraft.

In relation to change, we would like to see more co-operation between airports and population dynamics, on the timing of strikes, whether there has been a change, what the species mixes are, etc. This is basic ecology but it is important and it is important that we need to stress the changes taking place. Some incidental points that came up that are very interesting is that Mr. Lykos from Greece made a very important point during his paper that shooting near an airfield can disturb birds across the runway and I think that is something that people need to be very aware of. We had a situation in Dublin on one occasion where a flock of 2000 gulls was disturbed by a shooter and they all came across the active runway in a space of a few minutes so hunting and shooting near the airfield can actually cause hazards. The second thing is helicopters - Bruno Bruderer is working in Switzerland on disturbance by aircraft on waterfowl -were the most significant aircraft in terms of disturbance. Likewise, helicopters near the active runway are parallel to it outside the airfield and can disturb birds over the runway. I thought Dr. Bahat’s paper from Israel on a nicely designed study showed that behaviour can be used to enhance conservation, which was an excellent, simple, very effective piece of work.

Lastly I would just like to say that the fieldwork should continue, we would like to co-operate with anybody who is interested. There is a momentum now for work on behaviour in the field and then in the lab the iron vision work should continue. They have recently shown for example that crows do not possess ultra violet light receptors but possess enhanced vision in the violet part of the spectrum. These are interesting findings and they may have some significance. Likewise, some very interesting work has shown that olfaction is important; smell appears to be more important than we knew before. Taste aversion and the entophyte work, which was announced in Baltimore, I think may be very important.

Lastly in the case of the laser system, it is a behavioural question ultimately as to how effective it is.

Those are the themes we will be looking at in the future

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Report from the Bird Avoidance Modelling Working Group - Wilhelm Ruhe

In agreement with the working group remote sensing and our working group, we decided to cover both sessions in this Chairman’s report. So this report covers the sessions on recorded bird movements and remote sensing as well as bird avoidance modelling. It is proposed that it should be conducted in one session also in the future, like it has been in the past chaired by Luit and Dr Becker. I think this is still necessary because bird detection by remote sensing is also a vital part of bird avoidance modelling.

Our activities since Warsaw covered two conferences in Amsterdam, joint meetings between BAMBAS and the IBSC working group on bird avoidance modelling. In the first of these conferences we decided to focus the issues in the BAMBAS group on the science and development part and within the IBSC working group on policies and regulations. We held the second conference more like a workshop and it covered all kinds of technical aspects: sensors, data exchange and also the transfer of knowledge.

Within the period between the two conferences, I myself had the chance to work with the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and worked on the bird avoidance model for Alaska. This was a great chance to internationally co-operate and since that we have done quite a bit of co-operation like Jim Harper presented. We developed a strategic plan for a “North American Bird Strike Advisory System and these were really some milestones. There were smaller conferences and newsletters were distributed thanks to Judy’s activities and we had a lot of personal contacts as well.

Now, I would like to read this statement:

“Data and remote sensing data from small mobile radars on birds overflying airfields and analysed in GIS systems provide valuable information on the temporal and spatial activity patterns”,

But, I would also like to make an additional statement agreed between Bruno Bruderer, Judy and myself. We would like to propose:

”Radar studies are still an important tool to inform about spatial and temporal occurrence of bird movements. They provide one of the essential inputs to models on bird migration and appropriate validation. However, care should be taken that the off-the-shelf availability of cheap radars is not leading to a deterioration of radar information due to the use of this equipment without the expert knowledge needed for proper interpretation.

In other words: Care has to be taken and the development of more expensive and more sophisticated radar systems should continue.

Another topic was the EuroBase Bird Strike database. Like Arie showed us, this is a valuable source of information that could also be used in modelling. Statistical data need to be treated carefully to account for bias. A further topic: A network of radar stations is needed to monitor and better forecast bird migration in the Middle East, in Europe and elsewhere.

We also saw that not only bird migration can be a problem. We have had it in several talks., But, especially in the one talk from our colleague from Israel, he showed that besides bird migration, resident raptors can also be a huge danger in lower levels.

The modelling techniques are still advancing and are being tested. Efforts of continuous research and development show first promising results that need to be transformed into operational systems. Simulation models provide a better insight into biological systems and should be further advanced. Multi-disciplinary global efforts need a common language, definitions. Naming conventions should be standardised. Some notes on that have also been covered at the Round Table discussion.

A strategic long-term plan for a “North American Bird Advisory System” has been developed in international co-operation and everybody wishes it to succeed. So this could be a huge task for the future as well.

After we had the presentations, we continued with the Round Table discussion. We first talked on the definitions and naming conventions. We just picked one important issue and that was: ”How to define risk in risk surfaces?”. In that respect, it was the overall consensus that a special session is needed on the issue and a small discussion group should work out a definition on risk. We had quite a bit of discussion on risk and I think everyone knows about the problems when it comes to: Working out what ”Risk” actually means.

Besides these, naming conventions like I’ve shown in my paper need to be discussed and I would be glad to get a lot of reactions on what I proposed as an initial approach. I would like to continue collecting this information and circulate it among the members. We talked about data and our question was “What are the most important gaps in our data and our knowledge that need to be filled for modelling?” Which of these gaps can be realistically filled?

Validation and calibration of models and systems were also a topic. We decided that, because the members group is working so intensely on this issue, they would provide a list. Judy promised to circulate a list among the members.

We talked about communication with users, for instance about user-interfaces - what is needed and wanted and different users require different levels of information - which doesn’t change the model structure itself, only the user-interface. There needs to be quite a bit more discussion on user-interfaces, so that the user really gets what he needs.

The question was raised whether BAMBAS should be on the Internet as an open source and it is common sense that the Internet should be standard but other sources or possibilities of exchanging information and pushing information into certain flight safety systems should be developed as well so there is no limitation.

The final point was how do we improve our communication within the network? And we said we would like to exchange information on science literature, technical reports, media publications, new developments, information workshops or conferences, software, pictures, etc. One good source to get information is the website and it will probably be linked to the BAMBAS website where Judy has already put information on from our last conference with a lot of information on the current state-of-the-art bird avoidance models and on different sensors. We decided to exchange this information by e-mail, newsletters, workshops and reports.

Our overall goal is to build a network for the exchange of knowledge, data and system components towards global standards and partnership.

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Report from the Public Relations and Awareness Working Group - Bruce Mackinnon

Bruce was not able to attend this conference and therefore no report was provided.

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Report from the Impact Engineering Working Group - Ralf Speelman

We had several very interesting topics presented at this IBSC meeting. Rather than pull them into a separate session they were woven into the fabric of related sessions.

Birdstrike tolerance is the last line of defence. It is the requirement which is added when all other means of preventing birdstrikes result in a level of risk that is still deemed higher than acceptable and therefore unsatisfactory. By its nature then, the risks of a birdstrike in excess if the requirement are deemed acceptable. Change is inevitable as we all know and what was acceptable yesterday is not necessarily acceptable today.

We have all heard about incidents/accidents as evidence of the need to increase birdstrike resistance. There is no question, birdstrike resistance can be increased. It is primarily just an issue of demanding that specific birdstrike tolerance requirements be designed into the structure, verifying that the desired capability is actually available, recognizing that birdstrikes exceeding the design requirements are likely to cause consequences beyond that deemed acceptable at the design conditions, AND, that this is acceptable. This is not meant in any way to minimize the task. It is a complex and costly task and is never implemented without serious attention to the consequences of making/not making a change to the requirements. Highly specialized risk analysis tools, design tools, and materials are available as are also the tech experts who are competent in their application.

Increasing the tolerance requirement typically adds cost, a logistics cost tail, and may add weight. The consequences of this will be traded-off against the cost consequences of not increasing the tolerance capability. This trade-off will be heavily influenced by the availability of operational statistics and it is for this reason that the community must continue to encourage the recording of birdstrike events.

Those who are in support of, as well as those who are against, any increase in requirements will draw from the same pool of operational statistics. If you become involved in either side of the argument about revising a tolerance requirement, I suggest that you review my presentation about the art of influencing decisions---Decisions are NOT made in the best interest of those that are either for or against any change, BUT rather, the decisions are made in the best interest of the one(s) that are responsible (accountable) for living with the consequences of making, or not making, the change.

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Report from the Legal Working Group - Ante Matijaca

The liability matter created interest among people in aviation and others who are directly or indirectly involved in aviation. Beside the legal aspect, on this matter it is very interesting to stress an insurance aspect, I hope that for our next conference we will be able to introduce to you the new interesting papers both on insurance and legal liability aspects. Therefore I would like to present the following suggestions:

1. IBSC encourages a state to establish national committees for monitoring and consulting purposes.
2. IBSC encourages the state and the CAAs to promote and implement air safety regulations also on approach and departure sections outside the direct airport ground therefore avoiding the human activities that might attract birds.
3. Make best efforts to collect in a booklet all national regulations concerning bird strike or wildlife hazards and all court decisions. From this place I kindly ask some of you if you have some copies of the new court decisions to send them to us or if you know anyone who may have them.
4. We encourage initiatives by all participants to ensure that all responsible persons at the airport are sufficiently aware of the wildlife hazard problem and that they fully commit their support to wildlife management activities at their airport before the occurrence of collisions between animals, birds and aircraft. All of this is necessary to avoid the very long and expensive court proceedings and/or very high payment by insurance companies in the case of material damage or injury or death of people.

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Report from the Liaison Working Group - Jeff Short

No report was produced at this conference

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