Near miss prediction in commercial aviation through a combined model of grey neural network

Owing to unprecedented level of safety management, there have been few commercial aviation accidents recently, obstructing accurate prediction of safety trends. The innovative approach of proactive safety management was employed to replace reactive safety management for predicting commercial aviation near misses. In light of positive correlation between flight time and commercial aviation near-miss with different severity levels, this study aims to predict total / serious / non-serious near-miss per million flight hours. Considering grey system theory is good at prediction without adequate data, and artificial neural networks can handle nonlinear data well, the combined models of grey neural networks were developed for forecasting three data sequences over time respectively. Based on the empirical results of commercial aviation near-miss forecasting, BP neural network had the potential to enhance accuracy of grey prediction model. The three statistical measures of MAE/MSE/MAPE denoted the combined model of grey neural network outperformed the single model of GM (1, 1) or BP neural network. Predictions with a high degree of accuracy is beneficial to determining actual trends of commercial aviation near-misses at present or in future. Quantitative data will be offered for making specific decisions on maintaining preventive measures or promoting commercial aviation safety performance by introducing additional management actions.