Citation

Cottrell WD. Transp. Res. Rec. 2011; 2214: 27-33.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Transportation Research Board, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences USA, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.3141/2214-04

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The FAA's wildlife strike database includes bird strikes recorded in the United States only from 1990 to the present; therefore, there is no database of pre-1990 bird strikes. In this study, a model is fit to the number of bird strikes recorded in Utah between 1990 and 2009 and used to estimate the number of bird strikes occurring in Utah between 1968 and 1989. A variation on Smeed's law is used to estimate the number of bird strikes as a function of aircraft departures and bird populations. The model development used bird populations from 15 species that were involved in 70% of all bird strikes in which the species was known. Utah recorded 1,265 bird strikes between 1990 and 2009; 443 of these involved the 15 species. The modified Smeed model estimated the 1990 to 2009 bird strikes to within 11% of the actual value. The model estimated 155 bird strikes between 1968 and 1989. There was an eightfold increase in bird strikes from the 1970s to 1980s and the 1990s to 2000s and a substantial increase from 1968 to 2009. The indication is that bird strikes are a growing hazard in Utah. Future work might consider combing aircraft incident data for bird strikes from 1968 to 1989 in an attempt to validate the model's estimates. A model with additional variables may be used to predict the impact of bird-strike interventions and extended to a nationwide scale.