28 Aug 2011

CIVL Safety Initiative: Incident Reporting

The CIVL Incident Report Form can now be completed online. The CIVL Bureau is asking NACs, competition organisers and competition pilots to complete report forms concerning recent incidents. Organisers of Cat 2 competitions are now required to confirm the number of incidents at events, and to complete report forms accordingly.

As agreed at the 2011 CIVL Plenary, the Incident Report Form has now been made available for online completion on CIVL’s WPRS website. The report form can be completed by the pilot, competition organiser, competition official or a witness. Personal data will remain confidential, but the database will be analysed for statistical purposes to try to determine the common and underlying causes of incidents.

In order to build a significant pool of data on incidents occuring in competitions, the CIVL Bureau is asking NACs, paragliding and hang gliding competition organisers, competition pilots and witnesses to retrospectively complete forms involving recent incidents (this season) and if possible, during the last 2 years, at competitions. It would be particularly useful if NACs that have been collecting data on incidents at competitions could share this information with CIVL.

Further, organisers of FAI Category 2 events will, from now on, be required to declare any incidents at that event. When results are submitted for inclusion in the WPRS, organisers will need to ensure that an Incident Report Form is completed and uploaded to the CIVL website for any incident that occurred. This must be confirmed before the competition results are processed by the CIVL Competitions Coordinator.

Organisers might find it practical to print out the blank form so that during the competition, they can ask the relevant pilot or witness to complete the details while fresh in the mind. They can then either return it to the organiser for uploading, or they can choose to upload the information themselves.

Delegates, NACs and Federations are asked to support this CIVL initiative and to contact paragliding and hang gliding competition organisers in their territory and request them to comply.

To access the blank form online, the incident reporter simply needs to log in under his CIVL ID in the CIVL rankings website; and click on Incident Report. Mandatory fields are marked with an asterix. The reporter can state whether he is the pilot in question, witness, organiser or official. The form can be anonymous, but there is a field for CIVL ID which should be completed in preference. The form can be edited later by the reporter, although mandatory fields must be completed on the first pass. Personal data will remain confidential, but the database will be analysed for statistical purposes to try to determine the common and underlying causes of incidents.

For the purposes of this initial call for data, an incident includes: reserve deployments (even if the pilot landed with no injuries), landings requiring the intervention of mountain rescue or emergency services, and landings where the pilot sustained an injury requiring medical attention.