FAA Advisory Circular 150/5300-13, Airport Design, provides design standards for runway safety areas (RSA). However, many airports face financial or environmental constraints that limit their ability to meet these standards. FAA Order 5200.9, Financial Feasibility and Equivalency of Runway Safety Area Improvements and Engineered Material Arresting Systems provides guidance for comparing various RSA improvements. However, it only compares the financial feasibility of standard safety areas with standard engineered materials arresting systems (EMAS) installations and is limited to the runway-end safety area. ACRP Report 3: Analysis of Aircraft Overruns and Undershoots for Runway Safety Areas provides significant advances to the analysis of RSAs, while ACRP Report 50: Improved Models for Risk Assessment of Runways Safety Areas and ACRP Report 51: Risk Assessment Method to Support Modification of Airfield Separation Standards, introduce risk assessment methods and models for addressing RSAs and airfield separation standards. These reports also note a lack of detailed veer-off data. Although the analysis in ACRP Report 51 covered runway veer-offs, the model did not incorporate veer-off location distribution. Research is needed to develop a model that will assist airports and other stakeholders in assessing the relative risks associated with RSA development alternatives and object location determinations on the airfield. Research is also needed to develop guidelines for reporting and collecting runway veer-off incident/accident data.

The objectives of this research are to (1) develop a runway veer-off location distribution risk assessment model to help determine RSA requirements that meet an acceptable level of safety for various types and sizes of airports and (2) develop potential guidelines for reporting and collecting runway veer-off incident/accident data.

The final version of the tool, user guidelines, and technical report are available at the following link: https://www.trb.org/ACRP/Blurbs/170535.aspx.