# Human Factors as Predictor of Fatalities in Aviation Accidents: A Neural Network Analysis
## 2 State of the Art
The study in [25] statistically analyzed the trend in the evolution of air accidents, and the authors state that the lack of personnel is also one of the factors that compromises the smooth functioning of operations in the sector, as it overloads the professionals present, increasing the probability of errors due to the stress faced by other team members. And although human errors have been identified as the most significant cause of accidents in several studies over the years, the importance of technical and environmental factors in this issue is recognized as being responsible for a smaller proportion of serious accidents. Airlines have included in their reports occurrences of unsafe events with high frequencies but potentially considered low-severity incidents. The article in [26] presents a study that proposes a technical scheme for automatically classifying and identifying risk factors from Chinese civil aviation incident reports in an intelligent way in order to prevent the recurrence of such events. The authors state that unsafe events during a flight are always a major threat and concern for aircraft safety and can cause damage to the aircraft or even injury to personnel involved or on board. Flight safety and the sustainable growth of aviation also depend on the good performance of air traffic control (ATC). In [27], an analysis of human factors in air traffic safety is carried out, based on the human factors analysis and classification system--Bayesian network (HFACS-BN) model, in which some machine learning language techniques were used, to evaluate ATC performance. In [28], a statistical method is applied to detect anomalies in flight data using a hybrid machine learning language. A useful image is that of the Swiss cheese model of accident causation developed by [PERSON] in 1990 [8]. The Swiss Cheese Model is widely used in aviation safety management for its simplicity and ease of understanding. It provides a visual representation that helps in identifying potential weaknesses in a system and offers a basis for implementing corrective actions. The model has been instrumental in the development of various safety management systems, including the ICAO's SMS [11]. This human factor model serves as a conceptual framework for understanding how errors occur in complex systems like aviation. This model likens organizational defenses against accidents to layers of Swiss cheese, where each layer represents a barrier or a safeguard. While individual layers may have holes or weaknesses, only the alignment of these holes across multiple layers leads to the occurrence of an accident. This means that in an organization, there are safeguards against accidents at several levels (organizational, supervision, etc. ), and, hence, even if there is a failure at one of these levels, a safeguard at another level should prevent an accident. But if all safeguards fail at all levels, it is as if there were a hole at each layer, and the holes are aligned so that an accident can pass through the efforts to prevent it. Human factors can affect each one of these layers. Despite its widespread use, the Swiss Cheese Model has been subject to criticism. One of the main criticisms is that the model is overly simplistic and does not account for the dynamic interactions between different layers of defense. It also tends to focus on individual errors and does not adequately address systemic issues or organizational culture [29]. In this work, human factors are classified according to a general, comprehensive framework developed in [3], called Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS), shown in Figure 2, for the four different layers of the Swiss cheese model [3]. HFACS was developed for the field of aviation (both civil and military) and has been used to this effect [30], but has since been used in other industries as well, for instance, in the naval industry (in which it was used to show that most accidents are due to decision errors, the planning of inappropriate operations, and supervisory violations) [31].