Trust Strategies and Policies in Complex Socio-technical Safety-Critical Domains: An Analysis of the Air Traffic Management Domain

The future development of Air Traffic Management (ATM), set by the ATM 2000+ Strategy, involves a structural revision of ATM processes, a new ATM concept and a system approach for the ATM network. This requires ATM services to go through significant structural, operational and cultural changes that will contribute towards the ATM 2000+ Strategy. Moreover, from a technology viewpoint, future ATM services will employ new systems forming the emergent ATM architecture underlying and supporting the European Commission’s Single European Sky Initiative. Introducing safety relevant systems in ATM contexts requires us to understand the risk involved in order to mitigate the impact of possible failures. This paper is concerned with trust in technology. Technology innovation supports further (e.g., safety or performance) improvements, although there is often a lack of trust in changes. This paper argues that organizations need to identify trust strategies and policies supporting the delivery of technology innovation. Moreover, the identification of trust strategies and policies supports the understanding of subtle interactions between diverse, often competing, system objectives.