STRUCTURING AND ANALYSIS OF BIRD STRIKE RISK IN THE GRIFO SQUADRON: AN APPROACH BY SOFT OPERATIONAL RESEARCH

            The operational readiness of military aviation depends on continuous training, a core activity of the Grifo Squadron (2nd/3rd GAV), headquartered at Porto Velho Air Base (BAPV), in Rondônia. The complex has military, commercial and private operators, sharing runway and infrastructure, handling more than 600 thousand passengers annually, which highlights the density of significant air traffic in the region coexisting with the Amazonian biodiversity. In this context, avian risk, especially collisions with large birds, stands out as a severe threat to flight safety, with an inevitable presence, and it is up to managers to direct efforts to its mitigation. The relevance of the theme stems from the complexity and recurrence of these events, going beyond the purely operational sphere. In Porto Velho, avian risk management is largely linked to the inadequate disposal and collection of urban solid waste, which attracts opportunistic birds, especially vultures, aggravating aeronautical occurrences during approaches and takeoffs. The management of the problem transcends the limits of jurisdiction and the isolated capacity of the 2nd/3rd GAV, involving multiple stakeholders (military, operators, administrators, municipal waste management and environmental agencies) with different worldviews, interests and influence, evidencing an unstructured problem (messy problems). Regarding the application, from the perspective of Soft Operational Research, the study proposed the systemic structuring of the problem through a sequential multimethodology.