The U.S. Air Force announced recently it is making its Unit Risk Forecasting tool available for commanders and unit safety professionals.
The Unit Risk Forecasting tool is a machine learning-fueled forecast of squadron risk and the factors that influence increased risk. The tool uses more than a decade of historical safety data, unit personnel data, predictive capabilities and mitigation strategies to give commanders and decision makers a visual toolkit to minimize risk at the unit level.
“This tool will help increase combat readiness by reducing mishaps and giving decision makers access to information about mishaps, current and future risk profiles, and top factors driving risk for targeted and efficient risk reduction,” Laura Pick, Chief of Analytics and Chief Injury Epidemiologist, said. “This is part of a suite of proactive, predictive tools the Department of the Air Force is driving toward to empower commanders’ decisions with data-driven information.”
The tool evaluates risk based on each squadron’s mishap history and unit demographic information. Once the data is loaded into the tool, it is used to train the forecasting model which learns patterns in the data and outputs a risk forecast. Every month, new information is fed into the model, and the resulting risk forecast is displayed in a command summary page.
Officials said the tool is not a mishap predictor, but a way to quantify a unit’s risk level and assist commanders and safety staff with risk mitigation strategies.