International Journal of Scientific Management and Development ISSN:2345-3974

Vol.3 (2), 917-922 February (2015)

Research Paper
Applying data mining to extract damage level of bird strike on helicopters
Camelia Arbabzadeh*1, Abbas Toloie Eshlaghy2
1Department of Information Technology Management, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
2Department of Industrial Management, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
Available online at: www.IJSMD.Com
Received 20th November 2014, Revised 20th December 2014, Accepted 28th December 2014
Abstract
Underestanding the risk factors of damage will be helpful to mitigate damage of bird strike. Planning for preventing bird strike
evidence need to risk factors and relation of these factors to level of damage. Hence, the goal of this paper is extracting the risk factors
by consideration of damage level imposed on helicopters. The data source of the current research is the Federal Aviation
Administration Wildlife Strike Database which was gathered for about twenty years. In this paper, we used four kind of decision tree
algorithms included C5.0, CART, C&R TREE, and QUEST to extract damage level of bird strike (D, S, M, and N that demonstrate of
destroyed, substantial, minor, and not defined) on helicopters. The results demonstrated that bird size, helicopters type, phase of flight,
speed, and type of engine are the most important risk factors causing damage to helicopters, respectively. Finally the research
concludes with some suggestions to reduce damage of bird strike on helicopters.
Keywords: Bird Strike; Data mining; Decision tree.
Introduction information repositories likes data warehouses or databases
A bird strike, sometimes called birdstrike, bird ingestion (if (Gürbüz et al.2011) (Jiawei et al.2001).
bird swallowed by engine of aircraft), bird hit, or BASH (for
Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard) is a collision between an airborne Literature Survey
animal (usually a bird or bat) and a human-made vehicle, Both (2010) for a given period of time a risk assessment
especially aircraft (wikipedia). matrix constructed which is included bird species according to
Bird strike has become a major threat to air safety globally. Over frequency of bird strikes are involved and the percentage of
the years, collision between birds/wildlife and aircrafts has strike resulting in damage. The matrix is appropriate tool for
resulted in the death of hundreds of people (USMAN.2012). The manage and monitoring the bird strike hazards (Both et al.2003).
cost of bird strikes estimate of US$ 1.2 billion per year that this Allan (2006) introduces the well-known probability-severity risk
cost is with concerned of damage and delays (Allan ET assessment matrix for bird strike risk assessment that the bird
AL.2000). ICAO recommended to register the data of airport strikes per bird species over a given 5 year period is considered
bird/wildlife strike and organizing a programme for control and a measure of strike probability for a given airport. Damage is a
preventing this kind of events.This organization also introduce measure of likely severity that is the proportion of strikes with
roles and responsibilities within a bird/Wildlife strike control each 4Pspecies (Allan et al.2006).
programme (Airport Services Manual). Hence, quantify This risk assessment matrix is used as auditing tool for the
important parameters that lead us to assess level of damage that bird strike prevention activities of airfields (Searing.2005). It is
probably will occur in the result of bird strike is necessary. a simple tool which shows for which bird species further action
On January 15, 2009, the plane struck with geese, lost engine is needed. The risk assessment matrix always need to support
power and landed in Hudson river after 3 minutes into the flight. with a reporting system that furnish reliable information about
These bird strike events have major effect on safety in aviation occurred bird strikes (Both et al.2003) (Linnel,1999).
industry. Many researches try to find effective methods and Risk is defined as the product of the severity and probability
make suggestions to put an end to these kind of events but of wildlife strikes during a predefined period (Allan.2001).
applying data mining methods on bird strike is rarely occurred. Wildlife risk in and around airport is a concerning subject in
With the rapid growth in air travel, considering risk and safety is airports, need to find a threat to measure risk of bird strike in
important in aviation (Nazeri.2002). Aviation industry is one of airports. To provide a way posed by each wildlife species,
the fields that data mining methods have been applied (Gürbüz wildlife hazard management experts have suggested to utilize of
et al.2011). wildlife risk hazard assessments. In considering that risk is
Data mining is finding relationships to summarize the data in defined as the result of the severity and probability of wildlife
ways that exploit effective data that is useful to the data owner. strikes during a period of time (Allan.2001). Dolbeer et al
The relationships and summaries derived through a data mining (2000) described that birds with bigger size had more
exercise are often referred to as models or patterns (Gürbüz et probability to provide damages more severely than others in bird
al.2011) (Hand et al.2001). strike accidents. Measure of the severity is using the size of
knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) is another popular birds and the probability is the frequency of bird strike
name of data mining that is automated extraction of patterns and occurrence (Dolbeer at al.2000).
can show knowledge implicitly that existed in massive Tan et al (2010) for measuring an aerodrome’s wildlife
safety performance show a basic framework on the practical
*Correspondent Author : Camelia Arbabzadeh (camelia.arbabzadeh@gmail.com) application of wildlife risk hazard assessments. The case study is
Manuscript No: IJSMD-KINA-2014-506 Changi Airport and in this research try to help airports in better

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measuring and mitigating the wildlife hazards. At the end of
research is concluded that a risk-based approach is suitable for a
more multi-dimensional and meaningful assessment of the
wildlife hazard(s) at hand and assist airports to mitigate those
hazards by prioritize resources (Tan at al.2010).
Dao-De et al (2010) in Huanghua International Airport in
Changsha, chose 60 bird species and counted their risk by a bird
strike ranking assessment system. Then is applied a hierarchical
cluster analysis and all species were classified as four groups.
Finally 16 species of birds that have the most danger for bird
strike events is demonstrated (Dao-De at al.2010).
Show and McKee extract the index of bird strike risk in
airports by taking into consideration the bird population density,
the number of bird strikes per 10000 flights, and the number of
plane with different cargo at nine airports in eastern Australia
(Shaw.2010).
Methodology
IBM SPSS Modeler is a data mining software application
from IBM that used to build predictive models. SPSS Modeler
offers many modeling technics such as prediction, classification,
segmentation and association detection algorithms.
The methodology of this research is based on CRISP-DM
that in the below the process model of project is determined
(Chapman at el.2000):
Table 1: List of predictors which have the most significant effect on the damage caused by bird strike
Number Field
1. SIZE
2. ATYPE
3. PHASE_OF_FLT
4. SPEED
5. TYPE_ENGINE
6. SKY
4.Modeling: Decision trees are the most popular algorithms
for predictive modeling. A decision tree, depicts rules for
dividing data into groups. In this part, four decision tree
algorithms is choosed to applied on preprade data. Decision tree
algorithems that used in this model include C&RTree, QUEST,
CHAID and C5.0. it’s considerable that target divided in five
categories as described: S as substantial, When the aircraft
incurs damage or structural failure which adversely affects the
structure strength, performance or flight characteristics of the
aircraft and which
Fig 1. Diagram of the model provided for prediction of damage level caused by bird strike
International Journal of Scientific Management and Development
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1. Business Underestanding: before starting the project it’s
important to understand the business and identify the limitations
and problems that is connect with specified research. As above-
mentioned exploring risk factors that effects on damages level of
bird strike to helicopters is important to identified in order to
find the appropriate ways to mitigating the risk of bird strike in
airports.
2.data understanding: The data that used in the current study
is from the Federal Aviation Administration Wildlife Strike
Database. This database contains records of reported bird strike
since 1990. Because of strike reporting is voluntary, this data
base only represents the information from airlines, airports and
other sources.
3.Data Preparation: the data preparation phase include all
activities that led us to final dataset. For defininig most
important field relative to a specified target that is level of
aircraft damage, first performed data cleaning and
transformation of data for modeling tool then used feature
selection for receiving to data that will be fed model of research.
After this phase prepaid data divided to two parts of training and
testing data. Testing data is 30% of final data and will test after
building the model from training data.
Importance Value
Important 1.0
Important 1.0
Important 1.0
Important 1.0
Important 1.0
Marginal 0.945
would normally require major repair or replacement of the
affected component. M as minor When the aircraft can be
rendered airworthy by simple repairs or replacements and an
extensive inspection is not necessary. M? as uncertain level
when The aircraft was damaged, but details as to the extent of
the damage are lacking. D as Destroyed when the damage
sustained makes it inadvisable to restore the aircraft to an
airworthy condition. N as not defined, when the bird strike is
occurred but the level of damage not defined and is blank.
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5.Evaluation: in phase of evaluation must determine if the
quality of constructed model is acceptable or need to some
modifications. In this part for evaluating the model, used
evaluation node for training and test parts of data and the result
was accommodating.
Results and Discussion
As it was pointed out in the previous section, feature
selection is used for determing the most important input
Fig. 2 The important variables effective on bird strike
Figs. 3 demonstrate the most important types of the four
indices of helicopters type, bird size, phase of flight, and engine
type which are the most important factors in determining the
damage extent. Figure 3 plots the contribution of different bird
sizes on the damage imposed on helicopters. In this figure, D, S,
M, and N, stand for destroyed helicopters, substantial damage,
minor damage, and not defined. This figure shows that most of
the helicopters are damaged by small birds (more than 220
Fig. 3 Contribution of different bird sizes to damage imposed on helicopters
International Journal of Scientific Management and Development
ISSN:2345-3974
parameters according to output parameters. In the next step,
valuable inputs are obtained using the rules provided by derived
decision trees. As the figure 2 shows, helicopters type, bird size,
phase of flight, and engine type are the most important
parameters according to C&R Tree, respectively. The
helicopters type and bird size show a much more significant
effect compared to two other parameters. As seen, helicopters
speed has not had any considerable influence on the damage
imposed on helicopters.
helicopters) and only a few helicopters have been impacted by
large birds. As obvious in the plot, the small birds mostly cause
minor damages and no helicopterhas been destroyed by the
small sized bird. The medium sized birds have destroyed most
of the helicopters and have caused most of the substantial
damages to the helicopters. Summing up all the results taken
from the figure, it can be said that the medium sized birds are
the most dangerous birds for the helicopter.
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Fig. 4 compares the damages imposed in different phases of
flight. As obvious, most of the birdstrikes have been caused in
the En route phase. Moreover, the En route phase is the only
phase in which helicopters have been destroyed. As it could be
predicted, there has been only very small number of birdstrikes
in the Landing roll, Parked, Take-off run, and Taxi phases in
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which the helicopters are still or moving on the ground.
Substantial damage has been produced only in the four phases of
approach, climb, descent, and En route. More than 70% of the
helicopters damaged substantially have been in the En route
phase.

Fig. 4 Comparison of the damage imposed on helicopters in different phases of flight

Fig. 5 compares the damages imposed on different helicopter birds are more vulnerable and more attempts must be made to
engine types. “A” stands for Reciprocating engines, while “P” improve their design. Helicopters with turboshaft engine types
stands for Turboshaft engine types. The number of helicopters are more susceptible to substantial damages. Anyway, this can
destroyed by both of the engine types is almost the same, but the be due to the fact that the number of operating helicopters with
total number of bird strike to the helicopters with turboshaft is turboshaft engine types is much higher than those having
much higher than that of helicopters with reciprocating engines. reciprocating engines.
This shows that the reciprocating engine types while attacked by

Fig. 5 Number of helicopters damaged having different engine types

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Fig. 6 shows the number of damaged helicopter of each type
caused by bird strike. It shows that Bell 206, Aeros 250, MBB
BK 117, Sikorsky S-76, EC 135, and Robinson 132 helicopters
have been most struck by birds. Only a few types of helicopters
including Bell 206, Bell 47, Hughes 269 A, and Sikorsky S76
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have been destroyed by birds. Bell 206, Agusta 109, Hughes
300, and Eurocopter helicopters shows a high percentage of
substantial damage with respect to the total number of bird
strikes imposed on each of them.

Fig. 6 Number of different types of helicopters damaged by bird strike

The obtained rules flight phases. The helicopters AGUSTA 109, HUGHES 269A,
According to the rules derived based on the C&R Tree HUGHES 300, ROBINSON, EUROCOPTER, ENSTROM
decision tree, The riskful birdstrikes to helicopter occur with F28A, and BELL 214 are the most risky helicopters.
large and medium sized birds and in the Descent and En Route
Table 2: Rule extraction for the most riskful bird strikes to helicopter
Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Result
Size=Large, Medium Phase of flight= "Descent" Atype=[ "AGUSTA 109" "BELL-214" "ENSTROM F28A"
"En Route" "EUROCOPTER" "HUGHES 269A" "HUGHES 300" Substantial
"ROBINSON R22" ]

Conclusions namely C5.0, CART, C&R TREE, and QUEST have been used.
In this paper, it is attempted to model the bird strike to IBM SPSS modeler, a data mining software which possesses
helicopter incidents using the FAA wildlife database. Since the different modeling techniques, has been used as the modeling
decision trees are suitable prediction tools, four decision trees tool. In order to create the model, the data were first cleaned and

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adjusted according to the software prerequirements. Then,
feature selection was used for removing unimportant fields in
determining the output of the model which is damage amount. In
order to test the model, partitioning was used for departing the
test data from the data which are used for creating the model.
According the obtained results, the following conclusions were
taken:
 helicopters type, bird size, phase of flight, and engine type are
the most important factors in determining the damage extent in a
helicopter, respectively.
 Most of the helicopters are damaged by small birds (more than
220 helicopters) and only a few helicopters have been impacted
by large birds. As obvious in the plot, the small birds mostly
cause minor damages and no helicopter has been destroyed by
the small sized bird. The medium sized birds have destroyed
most of the helicopters and have caused most of the substantial
damages to the helicopters
 Most of the bird strikes have been caused in the En route
phase. Moreover, the En route phase is the only phase in which
helicopters have been destroyed. As it could be predicted, there
has been only very small number of bird strikes in the Landing
roll, Parked, Take-off run, and Taxi phases in which the
helicopters are still or moving on the ground.
 The total number of bird strike to the helicopters with
turboshaft is much higher than that of helicopters with
reciprocating engines. This shows that more attempts must be
made to improve this type of helicopters.
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