Deep Learning Approaches for Classifying Aviation Safety Incidents: Evidence from Australian Data

Aviation safety remains a critical area of research, requiring accurate and efficient classification of incident reports to enhance risk assessment and accident prevention strategies. This study evaluates the performance of three deep learning models, BERT, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) for classifying incidents based on injury severity levels: Nil, Minor, Serious, and Fatal. The dataset, sourced from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) spanning from 2013 to 2023, consists of 53,273 records and was used. The models were trained using a standardized preprocessing pipeline, with hyperparameter tuning to optimize performance. Evaluation metrics, including accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score, were employed to assess each model. Results revealed that BERT outperformed both LSTM and CNN across all metrics, achieving perfect scores (1.00) for precision, recall, F1-score, and accuracy in all classes. In comparison, LSTM achieved an accuracy of 99.01%, with strong performance in the "Nil" class, but less favorable results for the "Minor" class. CNN, with an accuracy of 98.99%, excelled in the "Fatal" and "Serious" classes, though it showed moderate performance in the "Minor" class. BERT's flawless performance highlights the advantages of transformer-based architecture in handling complex textual classification tasks. These findings underscore the strengths and limitations of traditional deep learning models versus transformer-based approaches, providing valuable insights for future research in aviation safety analysis. Future work will explore integrating ensemble methods, domain-specific embeddings, and model interpretability to further improve classification performance and transparency in aviation safety prediction.