Remove Before Flight

Analyzing Flight Safety Data with Python

Jesús Martos Carrizo

Alejandro Sáez Mollejo

Who are these guys?

Aerospace engineers
Passion for programming
Members of AeroPython

by Ryan McGuire

Objective of this talk

Throughout the use of a public database from the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) explore the capabilities of pandas
to manipulate relatively big databases and be able to show big figures about accidents in aviation

Disclaimer

We are not safety experts
We are not experienced data scientists

So... What are these guys doing up there?

We are python enthusiastics
We are curious about anything related to the aerospace field
This talk can encourage beginner programmers to keep exploring Python and Python libraries (hopefully! =D)
Aviation safety is an intriguing topic

Flight safety

What is it?

Flight safety studies incidents and accidents that appears as a consequence of any failure of the air transport system.

Design
Manufacturing
Certification
Maintenance
Operation
Accident investigation

Some of the actors involved in the investigation of an aviation accident

Why is it so difficult to find data about aviation accidents?

It is mandatory to establish accident (incident) reporting systems to facilitate the collection of information on actual or potential safety deficiencies. (ICAO Annex 13)

However the investigation and the publishing of the results depends on the member state.

The final report will be published only if the state conducting the investigation process approves it.

Some remarks about pandas

high level data-structures and manipulation tools designed to make data analysis fast and easy in Python
pandas is built on top of Numpy and makes it easy to use Numpy-centric applications (great news for scientific programmers)

Main data source

National Transportation Safety Board is charged with determining the probable cause of transportation accidents and promoting transportation safety, and assisting victims of transportation accidents and their families.

AND THEY PUBLISH RAW DATA!: http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/index.aspx



In [1]:

    
# Notebook style
from IPython.core.display import HTML
css_file = './static/style2.css'
HTML(open(css_file, "r").read())









    Out[1]: