BUILDING UPON AND GENERALIZING OUR EXISTING RESEARCH EXPERTISE AND CAPABILITIES IN DETECTING EMERGING SOFTWARE SECURITY THREATS THIS PROJECT WILL ATTEMPT TO DETERMINE EMERGING RISKY AVIATION CONCEPTS. TO DO THIS WE WILL COLLECT DATA FROM AVIATION SAFETY REPORTING COMMUNITIES BOTH AUTHORITATIVE INDEXING SOURCES OF DATA SUCH AS NASA S ASRS AS WELL AS LESS STRUCTURED CORPORA (E.G. FORUMS BLOGS AND NEWSLETTERS). WE WILL STORE THESE REPORTS IN A DATA REPOSITORY AND ANALYZE THIS DATA FROM A TEXT MINING PERSPECTIVE TO DETERMINE THE CONCEPTS IN THE REPORTS AND HOW THOSE CONCEPTS EMERGE AND EVOLVE OVER TIME. TAKING A PROACTIVE APPROACH AND BUILDING ON OUR PRIOR RESEARCH THIS PROJECT AIMS TO IDENTIFY POTENTIAL AVIATION SAFETY RISKS BEFORE THEY TAKE PLACE AND CAUSE HARM. TO ASSESS THE QUALITY AND UTILITY OF THE CONCEPTS THAT WE DETERMINE WE WILL EMPIRICALLY EVALUATE HOW CLOSELY THESE CONCEPTS ALIGN WITH MANUALLY CURATED DATASETS FOR EXAMPLE USING LABELS FROM PRE-EXISTING TAXONOMIES. WE WILL ANALYZE BOTH MORE FORMAL CURATED CORPORA AS WELL AS LESS-STRUCTURED ONES AND COMPARE THE TOPICS GENERATED FROM EACH. FINALLY WE DO NOT SEE THIS AS AN AUTONOMOUS SYSTEM BUT RATHER AS AN ASSISTANT TO AN ANALYST. TO SUPPORT THE ANALYST WE WILL TRACK AND VISUALIZE THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDENTIFIED TOPICS OVER TIME SO THAT TRENDS MAY BE MORE EASILY PERCEIVED.