struck and severity if he or she is), and explores ways to reduce the perceived risk (looking both ways for traffic and/or heeding pedestrian signals) to an acceptable level before proceeding. 

It is necessary to make the approach to managing safety risk into a formalized, objective process. This helps ensure the effective management and reduction of a safety hazard’s risks. SRM provides a means to: 

• Identify potential hazards and analyze and assess safety risk in ATO operations and NAS equipment; 

• Define safety requirements to reduce risk to an acceptable level; 

• Identify safety performance targets, the measurable goals used to verify the predicted residual risk of a hazard; and 

• Create a plan that an organization can use to determine if expected risk levels are met and maintained. 

Refer to Section 3 for further guidance and the process for using SRM to perform a safety analysis. 

## 2.1.4 Safety Assurance: Identifying and Closing Safety Gaps 

SRM alone does not assure the safety of the services the ATO provides; equally important are the efforts performed under the umbrella of Safety Assurance. Safety Assurance builds on SRM efforts by collecting and assessing data to monitor compliance, assess the performance of safety measures, and identify safety trends. The Safety Assurance component of the Safety Management System (SMS) encompasses all of the ATO processes and programs that survey the NAS. These processes and programs can lead to the discovery of previously unidentified existing hazards and/or risk controls that are outdated or no longer effective. Safety Assurance provides the means to determine whether NAS equipment, operations, and procedures—and changes to them—meet or exceed acceptable safety levels. 

## 2.1.4.1 Audits and Assessments 

To continuously improve the safety of its NAS equipment, operations, and procedures, the ATO conducts audits and assessments to determine whether the NAS is performing as expected. ATO employees also use audit and assessment techniques to test, validate, and verify safety data obtained and produced by the various entities and organizations in the NAS. Furthermore, ATO audits and assessments identify causes and correlations that can improve the understanding of safety performance. 

Audits and assessments verify suspected positive and negative safety trends identified through analysis. In the event that a safety hazard is identified through an audit and/or assessment, SRM is used to identify potential and/or known risk reduction methods. In this sense, Safety Assurance and SRM complement each other by providing a continuous loop of hazard identification and risk reduction methods. 

Audits and assessments may be scheduled or unscheduled formal reviews, examinations, or verifications of activities, controls, ATO operations, and ATO systems. The scope of safety audit and assessment activities can vary. An audit or assessment can either focus on a single procedure or piece of NAS equipment, or it can broadly examine multiple elements of a system. 

