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The answer is simple and it will make you think twice about flying. Throw away your conspiracy theories, the simplest answer is almost always the right one. I was involved in the commercial and military programs that were partially ignited by TWA 800. The issue was known but TWA 800 made it a priority. All this falls under what is termed “ The Aging Aircraft Wiring Systems” initiatives., which were launched in earnest by multiple organizations once the severity was understood. The aviation industry in general was caught off guard. The FAA, AFRL, NAVAIR/ NAVSEA, DARPA, NASA, NTSB, Sandia, major universities and all the airframe OEM’s, all had major programs launched. We had no technology to assess how bad things had become but the initial findings were very bad, I mean scary bad. In many cases, it was starting to look like it would be cheaper to scrap some aircraft than trying to fix them.What they discovered is that the wiring insulation lost a lot more of its insulation properties over time than what was anticipated and that wire clamping and routing had to be re engineered in many cases . All this is especially true in aircraft fuel tanks. Jet fuel isnt explosive unless it is a vapor. The last place you want a bare wire where arcing could take place is in a fuel tank. The more aircraft they inspected the red flags were hoisted ever higher. It was so bad that the FAA issued directives on certain model aircraft, restricting them to not fly below a certain fuel level in the tanks. This was to assure that the bare wire areas were always submerged in fuel, especially during takeoffs and landings.Since then a lot has been done, but it is still a big problem. The OEM’s and the FAA have been working towards fuel tank inerting systems. Systems that siphon off the fuel vapor and replace it with nitrogen, eliminating the explosion risk.Just dig around a bit on the FAA’s website to see the details and you will think twice about boarding an old aircraft.A final note. One of the big engineering mistakes identified as the likely cause of such an explosion was that the wiring harness bundles were not segregated by what the wires were doing. The fuel level indicator sensors in the fuel tanks are low voltage and low current. They are designed not to spark. During these investigations and research initiatives, the original wiring harness designs were reviewed for potential problems. Sure enough there were plenty.The biggest risk came from bundling high power and high voltage wires together in the same harness as the low voltage sensor wires. Anyone who has ever worked on cars as a hobby can tell you about being zapped by the ignition coil through the wire insulation. In an aircraft, its the perfect storm for catastrophe. So common sense seemed to have been left out of the design meetings on a lot of this. This was one of the first things that they started to fix with Airworthiness Directives from the FAA.The final words from flight 800 right before the explosion, the captain was recorded as saying, “Look at that crazy fuel flow indicator there on number four, see that? The likely spark that ended the flight.Inside a 747 center wing tank .. size of a roomwalkthrough the fuel tanks in below video to appreciate the volumeAdditional notes …I have added information on what has happened in the industry, due to the many comments on maintenance, in the sections below.An NTSB presentation from back when i was involved with this ntsbfueltanks.pptA couple of slides from the above NTSB presentation from 2007 ….lots of people asked if other planes have had the issue…here are severalJUST ADDED - For those who want the hard core details on the latest environmental testing on wires : http://www.tc.faa.gov/its/worldpac/techrpt/ar082.pdfUSA Today http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2001-05-02-faa.htm05/01/2001 - Updated 11:31 PM ETFAA to issue strict fuel-tank safety rulesBy Alan Levin, USA TODAYNearly five years after TWA Flight 800 exploded, federal aviation officials plan within days to issue tough new fuel-tank safety standards. The Federal Aviation Administration's final regulations would apply new standards to the entire fleet of about 7,000 commercial aircraft, several aviation sources told USA TODAY. The agency has estimated the changes will cost airlines about $170 million.The long-awaited rules address safety recommendations from the TWA 800 accident, which killed 230. The rules will require more inspections of tanks and revamped designs.The FAA estimated that without any changes the world's airlines could expect a fuel-tank explosion once every 4½ years. Officials hope the new fuel-tank rules will stretch the time between explosions to about 15 years.Instead of settling the issue, however, the new rules are intensifying the debate over what additional steps are needed to prevent fuel-tank blasts.The FAA last year proposed injecting tanks with inert gas to prevent explosions. But airline officials in recent weeks told an FAA advisory group that inert gas will not be necessary with the new standards, several aviation sources say. The airline industry contends the risks are so small that the estimated $1.6 billion cost of using inert gas would be better spent solving other safety problems.This contradicts findings by the National Transportation Safety Board last year that the only way to eliminate fuel explosions is by using inert gas.Three jets have been destroyed by center fuel tank explosions since 1990. On March 3, one person died when a Thai Airways International jet parked at a terminal in Bangkok was destroyed. Investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board say preliminary evidence shows the jet's center fuel tank exploded.Among the steps being taken to reduce the risks is an effort to get airlines to decrease use of on-board air conditioners, which heat fuel tanks. Last week, the FAA also issued an emergency order to shut off pumps in empty 737 tanks.USA Today Air-cooling gear can heat tanks05/01/2001 - Updated 10:00 PM ETAir-cooling gear can heat tanksBy Alan Levin, USA TODAYEvery day this summer, thousands of jets will take off with fuel tanks holding a heated, explosive mix of gases.Despite dozens of safety measures enacted since TWA Flight 800 exploded in 1996, officials continue to debate whether fuel tanks are safe enough. In the wake of another deadly fuel tank explosion aboard a jet in Bangkok, Thailand, in March, USA TODAY sought to determine how airlines in this country are following one suggestion to help reduce the heat in fuel tanks.In some Boeing jets, tanks sit next to air-conditioning systems that blast them with heat. At normal temperatures, jet fuel is difficult to ignite. But when fuel vapors get hot enough, a single spark can set off an explosion capable of breaking a jet apart in flight. Three such fatal explosions have destroyed jets since 1990.In a change from just a few years ago, many jets now use cold air piped in from the airport terminal instead of using the aircraft's own air conditioning, USA TODAY found.But roughly half of all flights in summer months still use the jets' air-conditioning systems, according to information from pilots, airline spokesmen and government officials."I think the running of the air-conditioning packs on the ground is the most important contributor to the development of (explosive) vapor," says Bernard Loeb, the recently retired head of the National Transportation Safety Board's aviation accident investigation team.After the TWA explosion, which killed 230 people, the NTSB recommended that air conditioning from the terminal be used.Explosions are rare, but the FAA estimates that on the average jet, fuel tanks are flammable 35% of the time. That could be reduced to 25% with mandatory use of alternative air-conditioning sources. Most of that risk occurs on the ground or shortly after takeoff. Cooler air at high altitudes cools fuel tanks.Spokesmen for Boeing, which built the three jets that exploded, and airlines say the tanks are safe. "We don't believe that the carriers who continue to run the (air-conditioning) packs have created an unsafe condition," Boeing spokesman Tim Neale says.One year ago, Boeing issued a letter to its customers suggesting that, "when available," airlines pipe cool air in from the terminal rather than run the on-board air conditioners. Airline officials say they have increasingly begun using "ground-conditioned air" in recent years, but more for economic than safety reasons. Cooling a jet with a system on the ground is cheaper than running a jet's air conditioners.Large carriers such as American Airlines and United Airlines direct pilots to switch off on-board air conditioners at terminals with an alternative source of cool air, spokesmen said.Airlines say that virtually all the nation's large hub airports are now equipped with air-conditioning systems at terminals. Southwest Airlines, which often flies to alternative destinations, uses ground air conditioning at about half of its most popular destinations, and the number is growing, spokeswoman Beth Harbin said.Alternative air conditioning can help only so much, however. Pilots report that some widebody jets are too big to be cooled exclusively by outside air, so they must continue to run on-board conditioners. And many outlying airports do not offer air conditioning.Because a jet's interior heats up so quickly in the sun, pilots say they sometimes have no alternative but to operate on-board conditioners. "I'm going down to Cancun, Mexico, this afternoon," airline pilot David Heekin said recently. "You better believe I'm going to have the air-conditioning packs going full swing."On jets made by McDonnell Douglas, such as the MD-11 and MD-80, the air conditioners were not placed next to the fuel tank. (Boeing now owns McDonnell Douglas.) Airbus placed air-conditioning packs next to tanks on its jets, but the company insulated the tanks and vented the area to reduce heat.see footnote link for overview of industry best practice and regulations on aircraft wiring from the FAA as a direct result of these activities.[1]Analysis of wreckage by Rendon GroupDisasters waiting to happen ……Photo of Arc-through of In-tank Fuel Pump Housing representative of post-accident inspection program (not from TWA 800) More aircraft would have shared the same or similar fate as TWA 800. We got lucky and fixed the problems first.Further ReadingAircraft Maintenance -The Inspection Process from http://www.coopind.com/news_AvMaint-WireMaintenance.htmOngoing wiring inspection is part of any aircraft’s regular safety check process. “In various checks (A/C/D-check) wiring is controlled visually for cleanness, cracks, chafing, color change and installation,” Arntz said. “This is done according to Original Equipment Manufacturer Standard Practice Manuals and EWIS (Electrical Wiring Interconnection System) tasks incorporated into the Aircraft Maintenance Program.”Still, unless something obvious happens—shortly before the explosion on TWA Flight 800, the captain was recorded as saying, “Look at that crazy fuel flow indicator there on number four, see that?”—electrical problems can go unnoticed. This is why such problems may not be found until the C- or D-Check, when “an aircraft is pretty much disassembled down to its bones,” said Frank Correro, StandardAero’s avionics manager in Springfield, Ill. “This is when technicians have their best opportunity to look at all of the aircraft’s wiring, to spot and rectify problems.” The only exceptions are self controlling systems built into an aircraft system that identify faults through BITE (Built-in Test Equipment) tests, and power wires that are specifically monitored with load control units (circuit breakers) to indicate system failure and protect wiring.Sometimes equipment manufacturers can help when aircraft wiring problems are identified in the shop. “Recently, HARCO was asked to look at a harness that had been in service for 20 years,” Gannon said. “The harness, which measured exhaust gas temperatures mated to probes, required exposed ring terminals to be fastened to the probe stud.” Now such an exposed ring terminal can invite moisture, which can reduce the insulation resistance of a wire harness. To address this, “Harco introduced some features to prevent the harness from absorbing water that improved the insulation resistance properties of the harness, and prevented false warning indicators from being triggered in the cockpit,” he said.What to Look ForUnfortunately for aircraft maintenance technicians, there is no advanced handheld device that can be waved over aircraft wires, to detect faults quickly and reliably. Instead, it takes careful visual inspections of wiring bundles, along with manipulation of wires for flexibility and signs of cracking, to detect problems before they become serious.“The problem is that most mechanics are not given extensive training in wiring inspection,” said Paul Sneden. He is an instructor at Global Jet Services. Based in Weatogue, Conn., Global Jet Services offers a range of professional development and continuing educations courses for aircraft technicians, including a week-long course in wiring inspection and maintenance that is used by MROs such as StandardAero. “They need extra hand-on training to identify and deal with the many signs of deteriorating aircraft wiring.”So what should mechanics be looking for when inspecting aircraft wiring? In general, anything that doesn’t look like factory-standard, Sneden replied. Ideally, wiring bundles should be secure but not under stress, with all clamps in place and properly locked. Exterior insulation should be unbroken and uncracked, and it should continue to be when flexed by hand to spot any hidden damage.Aging, faulty wiring is also thought to have contributed to the cockpit fire on Swissair 111 on September 2, 1998. While suggestive, the Canadian TSB investigation was unable to confirm if arcing from wiring of the in-flight entertainment system was the main event that ignited the flammable covering on insulation blankets that quickly spread across other flammable substances.Any form of staining is bad news. It could point to fluid leaking onto the wires, or deterioration of the wire’s insulation. “Similarly, any sign of chafing, charring, burning or arcing is not to be dismissed,” said Sneden. “The bundle needs to be removed and inspected, and if need be replaced.”That’s not all. Any signs of damage on wiring could be evidence of failures in other parts of the aircraft’s systems and airframe. The causes for wiring damage need to be tracked back to the source, so that these problems can be dealt with as well.A rule of thumb is the older and/or more used the aircraft, the more likely that the wiring is suffering from age-related deterioration. Since aircraft 20 years or older fall into the ‘aging’ category, mechanics need to be extra-vigilant when working on anything made in 1993 or earlier.Unfortunately, until the current wave of airline fleet renewals is over, MROs will find themselves coping with an increasing number of aging aircraft on a daily basis. The problem of wire deterioration is thus considered to be so serious, that “EWIS has been incorporated as a preventive measure to monitor wire aging,” said SR Technics’ Arntz. “Therefore it can be stated that on condition maintenance has been changed to a more preventive maintenance concept for wiring.”So far, “a complete re-wiring of aged wires is not yet a part of the rulemaking agenda,” he added. But this might change as active air fleets get older and if more aging wire issues emerge.Vigilance is VitalIf there is a moral to this tale, it is that aircraft wiring is a difficult-to-service element that must be monitored, inspected and maintained as rigorously as engines and avionics. The losses of TWA Flight 800 and Swissair Flight 111 point to the devastating consequences that can occur should this not happen.from An overview of the aircraft wiring issueBy David Evans, Editor Aviation Maintenance- Reprinted courtesy of Aviation Maintenance/Access IntelligenceThe potential hazard posed by bad aircraft wiring has generated a tremendous amount of activity in the industry. Some operators now treat wiring as a system, meriting attention during maintenance equivalent to the black boxes and other electrical components to which the wire is attached. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposal for fleetwide inspection of wiring in zones containing combustable materials or wiring within two inches of hydraulic, mechanical or electric flight controls could well involve a whole new - albeit necessary - burden on aircraft maintainers.The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) lent added urgency to the need for wiring inspections with its late June press conference, timed shortly before the 10 th anniversary of the TWA Flight 800 disaster, to reinforce and restate the Board’s concern about fuel tank safety and aging, cracked and deteriorated wiring. Recall that the accident airplane, an old B747-100, blew up shortly after takeoff from New York’s JFK International Airport on July 17,1996, for an overnight flight to Paris.All 230 aboard were killed when flammable vapors in the center wing fuel tank exploded. Electrical arcing in a bundle of wires outside the fuel tank produced a surge of current that passed down a fuel quantity indication system (FQIS) wire. As the Board noted in its press release of June 29, “The ignition of the flammable fuel/air mixture in the tank was attributed to an electrical failure.”Chafing the Dominant ProblemTo be sure, numerous airworthiness directives (Ads) have been issued since the TWA disaster, mandating wiring and other modifications to ensure electrical system safety. While the FAA does not have good records on the incidence of wire failures in the commercial industry, the U.S. Navy has amassed considerable information and insight. Navy data suggests that as many as one million man hours are spend annually in troubleshooting, isolating, locating and fixing wiring faults. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) data suggests that nearly as many hours are spent on unscheduled wiring maintenance as on scheduled maintenance.Further, the data collected by NAVAIR indicated that chafing contributed to more than a third (37%) of all wiring failures on Navy aircraft during the period 1980-1999. Moreover, despite the fact that chafing, or the erosion of insulation and the exposure of conductor, is a known problem, and the tools to resolve it are available, analysis of data from the years 2000 to 2004 show that chafing remained the leader of all wire failure modes on Navy aircraft.Perhaps the closest to an industry wide measure for the commercial side comes from the fleet wide inspections mandated by the FAA for fuel system wiring on the B737 fleet in 1998. The inspections were directed after fuel was observed leaking from a conduit for wiring that had been opened by electrical arcing. All B737 operators were required to report their findings to the FAA. The inspections revealed a clear relationship between aircraft age and the severity of the severity of the problems found. Fully 30% of aircraft with more than 70,000 hours were found with severe chafing and bare wires.That is twice the percent found on B737s with fewer than 70,000 hours. Some commercial operators have raised awareness of good wiring husbandry and practices to be avoided. For example, United Air Lines has widely distributed a poster outlining the do’s and don’ts for wiring maintenance.United’s laudable effort notwithstanding, we offer below a somewhat broader perspective of the aircraft wiring issue, including a contrarian view to the search for ever thinner and lighter wire insulation.Wiring 101The amount matters. Modern jets contain 100-200 miles of wiring running into every nook and cranny of the airplane. To borrow a biological metaphor, the wiring is akin to the body’s nervous system.The trend matters. New jets feature more wiring carrying more current (the advent of wireless systems is reversing this trend). The cabin area of a new-production jet, for example, features wiring for such things as in-flight entertainment systems. A measurement the electric power generating capacity of 1st, 2nd, and current generation jets of comparable passenger-carrying capability would show a steady increase in aircraft electric power generating capability.Protection matters, Fire detection and suppression is inadequate. Enough electric power for a medium-size office building is concentrated in the electrical and equipment (E&E) bay located under the cockpit. The E&E bay has neither fire detection nor suppression. A runaway electrical fire downed Swissair Flight 111 in Sept. 1998; a month later a Delta Airlines L-1011 experienced an electrical fire behind the flight engineer’s panel, in a location where hand extinguishers were virtually useless. With about 100 miles remaining on a flight from Hawaii to California, the crew effected an emergency landing at San Francisco. This airplane could easily have been “another Swissair,” involving an airplane of U.S. registry.Age matters. Wiring is not immortal; it ages in service. Over time, the insulation can break, exposing conductor. Exposed conductors create a fertile field for ticking faults, spurious signals and, worse, full-blown electrical arcing. Any carrier with a significant population of its aircraft having 10 or more years’ service has an aging wire problem.Location matters. Wiring is subject to changes in temperature, moisture, vibration and chafing. In some areas of the aircraft, such as in the leading/trailing edges of the wing, the landing gear wheel wells, etc., the physical stresses are higher than in more protected areas (e.g., the cabin)Installation matters. Sharp bend radii, improperly supported wire bundles, mixed insulation types in the same bundle, routing high and low power circuits in the same bundle, to name a few sins, can exacerbate the known environmental effects. Arcing in a vertically oriented bundle is more hazardous than in one running horizontally. One might suggest the large wire bundles indicate an electrical wiring philosophy based on ease of installation during manufacture, not necessarily ease of maintenance for the operator.Type matters. Certain types of wire insulation, notably aromatic polyimide, have known properties of hardness, vulnerability to cracking, and the tendency to arc spectacularly. Indeed, the carbonized insulation under arcing conditions itself becomes a conductor, spreading the danger literally with the speed of lightning.Maintenance matters. Wiring can be damaged during maintenance of other aircraft components, largely because technicians are unaware of the potential hazard created by stepping on a bundle or yanking it in such a way that brittle insulation is damaged further. Another major problem is unrelated maintenance damaging the wire. For example, drilling into aluminum structure creates shavings, called swarf. If those bits of swarf fall onto wire, they can eventually cut or wear through insulation, giving rise to intermittent (or worse) electrical failures. To be sure, it takes time to put a cover over the wires while drilling, then folding up the covers and removing them from the airplane. But it may take less time than involved in finding swarf-related faults in the wiring weeks or months later.The military’s experience matters. Some industry officials believe the U.S. military’s experience is not relevant jets are exposed to higher maneuvering loads and to harsher operating environments. On the other hand, the military’s experience with a jet designed with a 6,000 hour service life may be highly relevant to an airliner with a design service goal of 60,000 hours. The airliner is exposed to lower extremes over an order of magnitude longer period of time. In this respect, the military’s experience may be considered a form of accelerated aging from which the commercial side of the aerospace industry could learn much.Inspection types matter. Visual inspections are not enough. Eyeballing the wiring in a jet may uncover only a third or less of the insulation breaches exposing conductor. Yet technologies can be mobilized to quantify the state of wiring in an airplane, and to assess the amount of life remaining. These techniques can be used to target a cost-effective program of selective wire replacement.A Broad ViewThe airline industry may be at a place with respect to wiring that it was a decade ago with aging structure. The physical structure of an airliner now is built to be damage tolerant. That is, the airplane is designed such that structural components feature sufficient residual strength to withstand the weakening effects of fatigue cracking, say; from a tiny flaw that may lurk unseen somewhere in the structure from the day it leaves the factory. Recall that when damage tolerant structure was being debated, the manufactures worried the added weight would drive them out of the airplane building business and into the manufacture of railroad rolling stock.As it turned out, damage tolerant design added about 1,000 lbs. (454 kg) to the weight of a DC-10 while greatly extending its service life. Damage tolerant structure is now considered the norm.Wiring however, is not damage tolerant. As a weight saving measure, the thickness of the insulation has been shaved to minimum. In some wires, the insulation is about the thickness of four human hairs laid side-by-side. Or, as one expert observed, the industry is about “four hairs from electrocution.” Indeed, many of the problems of chafing, etc. elucidated above would not be the threats they are if the insulation was about four times thicker. Admittedly, this is kind of a brute-force approach, but by one estimate thickening the insulation would add about 200 pounds (91 kg) to the weight of wiring in a widebody jet.That’s about the equivalent weight of magazines and catalogues in the seat-back pockets. Perhaps a philosophy of damage tolerant electrical system design is only a matter of time—and certainly it is within the current state-of-the-art.Other potential improvements are numerous. Heavier insulation could be made an available option during manufacture. High power and low power wires could be better segregated. Connectors could be better separated, too and not all bunched together so that an electrical arc can jump from one to another. Longer- life circuit breakers could be installed as original equipment, saving considerable money over the long haul.Fire detection and suppression in the electronics and equipment (E&E) bay, and other unprotected areas where electrical systems are concentrated, could be insisted upon. The reduced maintenance costs, higher dispatch reliability, and fewer precautionary landings would, over the life of the airplane, more than offset the purchase cost of such features and protections.Brief Timeline on Flight 800 and the Fuel Tank Inerting FAA initiatives as a direct resultJuly 17, 1996 At about 2031 EDT, TWA flight 800, a Boeing 747-13, broke up in flight with a loss of life of all 230 passengers and crew. The crash debris fell into the Atlantic Ocean south of East Moriches, Long Island, NY. The accident investigation was one of the longest and most expensive in the NTSB's history. A substantial fraction of the aircraft was recovered and reconstructed, and numerous studies were carried in the effort to determine the probable cause. The Explosion Dynamics Laboratory at Caltech was asked by the NTSB to participate in the investigation and lead a group of researchers to examine the issues of fuel flammability, ignition, and flame propagation. EDL staff were involved from the fall of 1996 until the final hearing in August 2000.December 13, 1996 Safety Recommendation Letter A-96-174 published.TO THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION: Require the development of and implementation of design or operational changes that will preclude the operation of transport-category airplanes with explosive fuel-air mixtures in the fuel tank: (a) significant consideration should be given to the development of airplane design modifications, such as nitrogen-inerting systems & the addition of insulation between heat-generating equipment & fuel tanks. Appropriate modifications should apply to newly certificated airplanes &, where feasible to existing airplanes.May 20, 1997 Added fuel tank flammability reduction to the Ten-Mosted Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements:"Reduce the potential for explosive fuel-air mixtures in fuel tanks of transport category aircraft. The NTSB has urged the FAA to make operational changes. They include refueling the center wing tank from cooler ground fuel tanks before flight, monitoring temperatures and maintaining a proper minimum amount of fuel in the tanks."December 8-9, 1997 NTSB Investigative hearing.August 22 and 23, 2000 Final hearing by NTSB and announcement of probable cause.2002 Fuel-tank inerting added to Ten-Most Wanted List (removed in 2008)Feb 17, 2004 The FAA announced that it is considering issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR) requiring a fuel tank inerting system to be installed on existing aircraft with center wing tank flammability hazards.Feb 15, 2005 The FAA issued the special conditions for the certification of the flammability reduction means (FRM) or fuel tank inerting system proposed by Boeing for the 747 family of aircraft. This system will use hollow fiber membranes to generate "nitrogen enhanced air" to fill the vapor space of the center fuel tank in order to reduce the O2 concentration below 12% for a sufficient duration of the flight that the center fuel is not flammable for greater than 3% of the fleet operational time.Nov 15, 2005 The FAA has finally put on public display the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on fuel tank inerting.November 23, 2005 The (NPRM) was published in the Federal register.March 21, 2006 The FAA has extended the deadline for comment on the NPRM to May 8, 2006.July 12, 2006 From the NTSB website: "The investigation into a wing fuel tank explosion on a Transmile Airlines B-727 airplane in Bangalore, India, on May 4, 2006, is ongoing. The evidence indicates that an explosion in the left wing fuel tank destroyed the structural integrity of the wing."July 21, 2008 The FAA has issued the the final rule: "Reduction of Fuel Tank Flammability in Transport Aircraft." The rule requires retrofitting of certain aircraft with heated center wing tanks and use of flammability reduction means (inerting systems) or ignition mitigation means (foam) on future aircraft to meet a target flammability exposure of 3% fleet average flammability and specific risk of 3% during ground operation and climb out on warm day, above 80 F. The present value of the total compliance cost is estimated by the FAA to be 1 billion USD. Boeing has developed and placed into production inerting systems based on hollow fiber membrane technology for the 747 and 737 typeOctober 16, 2008 Safety Recommendation A-96-174 closed as an acceptable action.More detailsFAA Lessons LearnedNASA Analysis https://sma.nasa.gov/docs/default-source/safety-messages/safetymessage-2011-01-09-twa800inflightbreakup.pdf?sfvrsn=4http://pe.org.pl/articles/2013/7/5.pdfhttps://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC%2025_981-1.pdfFootnotes[1] https://www.faa.gov/training_testing/training/air_training_program/job_aids/media/ewis_job-aid_2.0_printable.pdf

Go down this list and see what is important to you.Computer science – study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems.Theory of computation – branch that deals with whether and how efficiently problems can be solved on a model of computation, using an algorithmAutomata theory – study of mathematical objects called abstract machines or automata and the computational problems that can be solved using them.Formal languages – set of strings of symbols.Computability theory – branch of mathematical logic and computer science that originated in the 1930s with the study of computable functions and Turing degrees.Computational complexity theory – branch of the theory of computation in theoretical computer science and mathematics that focuses on classifying computational problems according to their inherent difficulty, and relating those classes to each otherConcurrency theory – In computer science, concurrency is a property of systems in which several computations are executing simultaneously, and potentially interacting with each otherAlgorithms – step-by-step procedure for calculationsDistributed algorithms – algorithm designed to run on computer hardware constructed from interconnected processorsParallel algorithms – algorithm which can be executed a piece at a time on many different processing devices, and then put back together again at the end to get the correct result.Data structures – particular way of storing and organizing data in a computer so that it can be used efficiently.Computer architecture – In computer science and engineering, computer architecture is the practical art of selecting and interconnecting hardware components to create computers that meet functional, performance and cost goals and the formal modeling of those systems.VLSI design – process of creating integrated circuits by combining thousands of transistors into a single chipOperating systems – set of software that manages computer hardware resources and provides common services for computer programsComputer communications (networks) – collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and informationInformation theory – branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of informationInternet – global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (often called TCP/IP, although not all applications use TCP) to serve billions of users worldwide.World wide web – part of the Internet; system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet.Wireless computing – any type of computer network that is not connected by cables of any kind.Computer security – branch of computer technology known as information security as applied to computers and networks.Cryptography – practice and study of hiding information.Fault-tolerant computing – property that enables a system (often computer-based) to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of (or one or more faults within) some of its componentsDistributed computing – field of computer science that studies distributed systemsGrid computing – federation of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goalParallel computing – form of computation in which many calculations are carried out simultaneously, operating on the principle that large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which are then solved concurrently ("in parallel").High-performance computing – computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculationQuantum computing – device for computation that makes direct use of quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on dataComputer graphics – graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware.Image processing – any form of signal processing for which the input is an image, such as a photograph or video frame; the output of image processing may be either an image or a set of characteristics or parameters related to the imageScientific visualization – interdisciplinary branch of science primarily concerned with the visualization of three-dimensional phenomena (architectural, meteorological, medical, biological, etc.), where the emphasis is on realistic renderings of volumes, surfaces, illumination sources, and so forth, perhaps with a dynamic (time) component".Computational geometry – branch of computer science devoted to the study of algorithms which can be stated in terms of geometrySoftware engineering – application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software; that is the application of engineering to softwareFormal methods – particular kind of mathematically based techniques for the specification, development and verification of software and hardware systemsFormal verification – act of proving or disproving the correctness of intended algorithms underlying a system with respect to a certain formal specification or property, using formal methods of mathematicsProgramming languages – artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computerProgramming paradigms – fundamental style of computer programmingObject-oriented programming – programming paradigm using "objects" – data structures consisting of data fields and methods together with their interactions – to design applications and computer programsFunctional programming – programming paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable dataProgram semantics – field concerned with the rigorous mathematical study of the meaning of programming languagesType theory – any of several formal systems that can serve as alternatives to naive set theory, or the study of such formalisms in generalCompilers – computer program (or set of programs) that transforms source code written in a programming language (the source language) into another computer language (the target language, often having a binary form known as object code)Concurrent programming languages – form of computing in which programs are designed as collections of interacting computational processes that may be executed in parallelInformation science – interdisciplinary field primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of informationDatabase – organized collection of data, today typically in digital formRelational database – collection of data items organized as a set of formally described tables from which data can be accessed easilyDistributed database – database in which storage devices are not all attached to a common CPU.Object database – database management system in which information is represented in the form of objects as used in object-oriented programmingMultimedia – media and content that uses a combination of different content forms.hypermedia – computer-based information retrieval system that enables a user to gain or provide access to texts, audio and video recordings, photographs and computer graphics related to a particular subject.Data mining – process that results in the discovery of new patterns in large data setsInformation retrieval – area of study concerned with searching for documents, for information within documents, and for metadata about documents, as well as that of searching structured storage, relational databases, and the World Wide Web.Artificial intelligence – branch of computer science that deals with intelligent behavior, learning, and adaptation in machines.Automated reasoning – area of computer science and mathematical logic dedicated to understand different aspects of reasoning.Computer vision – field that includes methods for acquiring, processing, analyzing, and understanding images and, in general, high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions.Machine learning – scientific discipline concerned with the design and development of algorithms that allow computers to evolve behaviors based on empirical data, such as from sensor data or databasesArtificial neural network – mathematical model or computational model that is inspired by the structure and/or functional aspects of biological neural networksNatural language processing – field of computer science, artificial intelligence (also called machine learning), and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages.Computational linguistics – interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective.Expert systems – computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expertRobotics – branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robotsHuman-computer interaction – study, planning, and design of the interaction between people (users) and computers.Numerical analysis – study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to general symbolic manipulations) for the problems of mathematical analysis (as distinguished from discrete mathematics).Algebraic (symbolic) computation – relates to algorithms and software for manipulating mathematical expressions and equations in symbolic form, as opposed to manipulating the approximations of specific numerical quantities represented by those symbols. Software applications that perform symbolic calculations are called computer algebra systems.Computational number theory – study of algorithms for performing number theoretic computationsComputational mathematics – involves mathematical research in areas of science where computing plays a central and essential role, emphasizing algorithms, numerical methods, and symbolic methodsScientific computing (Computational science) – Computational biology (bioinformatics) – involves the development and application of data-analytical and theoretical methods, mathematical modeling and computational simulation techniques to the study of biological, behavioral, and social systems.Computational science – subfield of computer science concerned with constructing mathematical models and quantitative analysis techniques and using computers to analyze and solve scientific problemsComputational chemistry – branch of chemistry that uses principles of computer science to assist in solving chemical problemsComputational neuroscience – study of brain function in terms of the information processing properties of the structures that make up the nervous system.Computer-aided engineering – broad usage of computer software to aid in engineering tasks.Finite element analysis – numerical technique for finding approximate solutions of partial differential equations (PDE) as well as integral equations.Computational fluid dynamics – branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical methods and algorithms to solve and analyze problems that involve fluid flows.Computational economics – research discipline at the interface between computer science and economic and management scienceComputational sociology – branch of sociology that uses computationally intensive methods to analyze and model social phenomena.Computational finance – cross-disciplinary field which relies on computational intelligence, mathematical finance, numerical methods and computer simulations to make trading, hedging and investment decisions, as well as facilitating the risk management of those decisionsHumanities computing (Digital Humanities) – area of research and teaching concerned with the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanitiesInformation systems – study of complementary networks of hardware and software that people and organizations use to collect, filter, process, create, and distribute dataBusiness informatics – discipline combining information technology (IT), informatics and management concepts.Information technology – Management information systems – provides information that is needed to manage organizations efficiently and effectivelyHealth informatics – discipline at the intersection of information science, computer science, and health care.Mathematics – search for fundamental truths in pattern, quantity, and change.Algebra – one of the main branches of mathematics, it concerns the study of structure, relation and quantity.Group theory – studies the algebraic structures known as groups.Group representation – describe abstract groups in terms of linear transformations of vector spacesRing theory – study of ring–algebraic structures in which addition and multiplication are defined and have similar properties to those familiar from the integersField theory – branch of mathematics which studies the properties of fields Linear algebra – branch of mathematics concerning finite or countably infinite dimensional vector spaces, as well as linear mappings between such spaces.Vector space – mathematical structure formed by a collection of vectors: objects that may be added together and multiplied ("scaled") by numbers, called scalars in this context.Multilinear algebra – extends the methods of linear algebraLie algebra – algebraic structure whose main use is in studying geometric objects such as Lie groups and differentiable manifoldsAssociative algebra – associative ring that has a compatible structure of a vector space over a certain field K or, more generally, of a module over a commutative ring R.Non-associative algebra – K-vector space (or more generally a module) A equipped with a K-bilinear mapUniversal algebra – field of mathematics that studies algebraic structures themselves, not examples ("models") of algebraic structuresHomological algebra – branch of mathematics which studies homology in a general algebraic settingCategory theory – area of study in mathematics that examines in an abstract way the properties of particular mathematical concepts, by formalising them as collections of objects and arrows (also called morphisms, although this term also has a specific, non-category-theoretical sense), where these collections satisfy some basic conditionsLattice theory – partially ordered set in which any two elements have a unique supremum (also called a least upper bound or join) and a unique infimum (also called a greatest lower bound or meet).Order theory – branch of mathematics which investigates our intuitive notion of order using binary relations.Differential algebra – algebras equipped with a derivation, which is a unary function that is linear and satisfies the Leibniz product rule.Analysis – branch of pure mathematics that includes the theories of differentiation, integration and measure, limits, infinite series, and analytic functionsReal analysis – branch of mathematical analysis dealing with the set of real numbers and functions of a real variable.Calculus – branch of mathematics focused on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series.Complex analysis – branch of mathematical analysis that investigates functions of complex numbersFunctional analysis – branch of mathematical analysis, the core of which is formed by the study of vector spaces endowed with some kind of limit-related structure (e.g. inner product, norm, topology, etc.) and the linear operators acting upon these spaces and respecting these structures in a suitable senseOperator theory – branch of functional analysis that focuses on bounded linear operators, but which includes closed operators and nonlinear operators.Non-standard analysis – branch of classical mathematics that formulates analysis using a rigorous notion of an infinitesimal number.Harmonic analysis – branch of mathematics concerned with the representation of functions or signals as the superposition of basic waves, and the study of and generalization of the notions of Fourier series and Fourier transforms.p-adic analysis – branch of number theory that deals with the mathematical analysis of functions of p-adic numbers.Ordinary differential equations – ordinary differential equation (ODE) is an equation in which there is only one independent variable and one or more derivatives of a dependent variable with respect to the independent variable, so that all the derivatives occurring in the equation are ordinary derivatives.Partial differential equations – differential equation that contains unknown multivariable functions and their partial derivatives.Probability theory – branch of mathematics concerned with probability, the analysis of random phenomena.Measure theory – systematic way to assign a number to each suitable subset of that set, intuitively interpreted as its size.Ergodic theory – branch of mathematics that studies dynamical systems with an invariant measure and related problems.Stochastic process – collection of random variables; this is often used to represent the evolution of some random value, or system, over time.Geometry – branch of mathematics concerned with questions of shape, size, relative position of figures, and the properties of space. Geometry is one of the oldest mathematical sciences.Topology – major area of mathematics concerned with properties that are preserved under continuous deformations of objects, such as deformations that involve stretching, but no tearing or gluing.General topology – branch of topology which studies properties of topological spaces and structures defined on them.Algebraic topology – branch of mathematics which uses tools from abstract algebra to study topological spacesGeometric topology – study of manifolds and maps between them, particularly embedings of one manifold into another.Differential topology – field dealing with differential functions on differentiable manifoldsAlgebraic geometry – branch of mathematics which combines techniques of abstract algebra, especially commutative algebra, with the language and the problems of geometryDifferential geometry – mathematical discipline that uses the techniques of differential calculus and integral calculus, as well as linear algebra and multilinear algebra, to study problems in geometryProjective geometry – study of geometric properties that are invariant under projective transformationsAffine geometry – study of geometric properties which remain unchanged by affine transformationsNon-Euclidean geometry – either of two specific geometries that are, loosely speaking, obtained by negating the Euclidean parallel postulate, namely hyperbolic and elliptic geometry.Convex geometry – branch of geometry studying convex sets, mainly in Euclidean space.Discrete geometry – branch of geometry that studies combinatorial properties and constructive methods of discrete geometric objects.Trigonometry – branch of mathematics that studies relationships involving lengths and angles of trianglesNumber theory – branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integersAnalytic number theory – branch of number theory that uses methods from mathematical analysis to solve problems about the integersAlgebraic number theory – major branch of number theory which studies algebraic structures related to algebraic integersGeometric number theory – studies convex bodies and integer vectors in n-dimensional spaceLogic and Foundations of mathematics – subfield of mathematics with close connections to the foundations of mathematics, theoretical computer science and philosophical logic.Set theory – branch of mathematics that studies sets, which are collections of objectsProof theory – branch of mathematical logic that represents proofs as formal mathematical objects, facilitating their analysis by mathematical techniquesModel theory – study of (classes of) mathematical structures (e.g. groups, fields, graphs, universes of set theory) using tools from mathematical logic Recursion theory – branch of mathematical logic and computer science that originated in the 1930s with the study of computable functions and Turing degreesModal logic – type of formal logic primarily developed in the 1960s that extends classical propositional and predicate logic to include operators expressing modalityIntuitionistic logic – symbolic logic system differing from classical logic in its definition of the meaning of a statement being trueApplied mathematics – branch of mathematics that concerns itself with mathematical methods that are typically used in science, engineering, business, and industry.Mathematical statistics – study of statistics from a mathematical standpoint, using probability theory as well as other branches of mathematics such as linear algebra and analysisProbability – likelihood or chance that something is the case or will happen Econometrics – application of mathematics and statistical methods to economic dataActuarial science – discipline that applies mathematical and statistical methods to assess risk in the insurance and finance industries.Demography – statistical study of human populations and sub-populations.Approximation theory – study of how functions can best be approximated with simpler functions, and with quantitatively characterizing the errors introduced thereby.Numerical analysis – study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to general symbolic manipulations) for the problems of mathematical analysis (as distinguished from discrete mathematics).Optimization (Mathematical programming) – selection of a best element from some set of available alternatives.Operations research – study of the application of advanced analytical methods to help make better decisionsLinear programming – mathematical method for determining a way to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a given mathematical model for some list of requirements represented as linear relationshipsDynamical systems – concept in mathematics where a fixed rule describes the time dependence of a point in a geometrical spaceChaos theory – study of the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect.Fractal geometry – mathematical set that has a fractal dimension that usually exceeds its topological dimension and may fall between the integers.Mathematical physics – development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physicsQuantum field theory – theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of systems classically parametrized (represented) by an infinite number of degrees of freedom, that is, fields and (in a condensed matter context) many-body systems.Statistical mechanics – branch of physics that applies probability theory, which contains mathematical tools for dealing with large populations, to the study of the thermodynamic behavior of systems composed of a large number of particles.Information theory – branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information.Cryptography – study of means of obscuring information, such as codes and ciphersCombinatorics – branch of mathematics concerning the study of finite or countable discrete structuresCoding theory – study of the properties of codes and their fitness for a specific applicationGraph theory – study of graphs, mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects from a certain collectionGame theory – study of strategic decision making. More formally, it is "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers."Statistics – collection, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. Computational statistics – interface between statistics and computer science.Data mining – process that results in the discovery of new patterns in large data setsRegression – estimates the conditional expectation of the dependent variable given the independent variables – that is, the average value of the dependent variable when the independent variables are held fixed.Simulation – Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. The act of simulating something first requires that a model be developed; this model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected physical or abstract system or process. The model represents the system itself, whereas the simulation represents the operation of the system over time.Bootstrap (statistics) – method for assigning measures of accuracy to sample estimates (Efron and Tibshirani 1993).Design of experiments – design of any information-gathering exercises where variation is present, whether under the full control of the experimenter or notBlock design – set together with a family of subsets (repeated subsets are allowed at times) whose members are chosen to satisfy some set of properties that are deemed useful for a particular application.Analysis of variance – collection of statistical models, and their associated procedures, in which the observed variance in a particular variable is partitioned into components attributable to different sources of variation.Response surface methodology – explores the relationships between several explanatory variables and one or more response variables.Engineering statistics – Engineering statistics combines engineering and statisticsSpatial statistics – any of the formal techniques which study entities using their topological, geometric, or geographic properties.Social statistics – use of statistical measurement systems to study human behavior in a social environmentStatistical modelling – formalization of relationships between variables in the form of mathematical equationsBiostatistics – application of statistics to a wide range of topics in biology. Epidemiology – study of the distribution and patterns of health-events, health-characteristics and their causes or influences in well-defined populations.Multivariate analysis – observation and analysis of more than one statistical variable at a time.Structural equation model – statistical technique for testing and estimating causal relations using a combination of statistical data and qualitative causal assumptions.Time series – sequence of data points, measured typically at successive time instants spaced at uniform time intervals.Reliability theory – describes the probability of a system completing its expected function during an interval of time.Quality control – process by which entities review the quality of all factors involved in production.Statistical theory – provides a basis for the whole range of techniques, in both study design and data analysis, that are used within applications of statistics.Decision theory – identifies the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision.Mathematical statistics – study of statistics from a mathematical standpoint, using probability theory as well as other branches of mathematics such as linear algebra and analysis.Probability – likelihood or chance that something is the case or will happen.Sample Survey – process of selecting a sample of elements from a target population in order to conduct a survey.Sampling theory – study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data.Survey methodology – field that studies the sampling of individuals from a population with a view towards making statistical inferences about the population using the sample.Systems science – interdisciplinary field of science that studies the nature of complex systems in nature, society, and science.Chaos theory – field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, engineering, economics, biology, and philosophy; studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions.Complex systems and Complexity Theory – studies how relationships between parts give rise to the collective behaviors of a system and how the system interacts and forms relationships with its environment.Cybernetics – interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Biocybernetics – application of cybernetics to biological science, composed of biological disciplines that benefit from the application of cybernetics: neurology, multicellular systems and others.Engineering cybernetics – field of cybernetics, which deals with the question of control engineering of mechatronic systems as well as chemical or biological systems.Management cybernetics – field of cybernetics concerned with management and organizations.Medical cybernetics – branch of cybernetics which has been heavily affected by the development of the computer, which applies the concepts of cybernetics to medical research and practice.New Cybernetics – study of self-organizing systems according to Peter Harries-Jones (1988), "looking beyond the issues of the "first", "old" or "original" cybernetics and their politics and sciences of control, to the autonomy and self-organization capabilities of complex systems".Second-order cybernetics – investigates the construction of models of cybernetic systems.Control theory – Control theory is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering and mathematics that deals with the behavior of dynamical systems. The external input of a system is called the reference. When one or more output variables of a system need to follow a certain reference over time, a controller manipulates the inputs to a system to obtain the desired effect on the output of the system.Control engineering – engineering discipline that applies control theory to design systems with desired behaviors.Control systems – device, or set of devices to manage, command, direct or regulate the behavior of other devices or system.Dynamical systems – concept in mathematics where a fixed rule describes the time dependence of a point in a geometrical space.Operations research – study of the use of advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions.Systems dynamics – approach to understanding the behaviour of complex systems over time.Systems analysis – study of sets of interacting entities, including computer systems analysis.Systems theory – interdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research.Developmental systems theory – overarching theoretical perspective on biological development, heredity, and evolutionGeneral systems theory – interdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research.Linear time-invariant systems – investigates the response of a linear and time-invariant system to an arbitrary input signal.Mathematical system theory – area of mathematics used to describe the behavior of complex dynamical systems, usually by employing differential equations or difference equations.Systems biology – several related trends in bioscience research, and a movement that draws on those trends.Systems ecology – interdisciplinary field of ecology, taking a holistic approach to the study of ecological systems, especially ecosystems.Systems engineering – interdisciplinary field of engineering focusing on how complex engineering projects should be designed and managed over their life cycles.Systems neuroscience – subdiscipline of neuroscience and systems biology that studies the function of neural circuits and systems.Systems psychology – branch of applied psychology that studies human behaviour and experience in complex systems.Anthropology - study of humans, past and present, that draws and builds upon knowledge from the social sciences and biological sciences, as well as the humanities and the natural sciences.Applied anthropology – application of the method and theory of anthropology to the analysis and solution of practical problems.Archaeology – study of cultures via material remains and environmental dataCultural anthropology – branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the effect of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities.Ethnobiology – scientific study of dynamic relationships between peoples, biota, and environments, from the distant past to the immediate present.Ethnography – systematic study of people and cultures.Ethnology – branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.Ethnopoetics – method of recording text versions of oral poetry or narrative performances (i.e., verbal lore) that uses poetic lines, verses, and stanzas (instead of prose paragraphs) to capture the formal, poetic performance elements which would otherwise be lost in the written texts.Evolutionary anthropology – interdisciplinary study of the evolution of human physiology and human behaviour and the relation between hominids and non-hominid primates.Experimental archaeology – Experimental archaeology employs a number of different methods, techniques, analyses, and approaches in order to generate and test hypotheses, based upon archaeological source material, like ancient structures or artifacts.Historical archaeology – form of archaeology dealing with topics that are already attested in written records.Linguistic anthropology – is the interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life.Medical anthropology – interdisciplinary field which studies "human health and disease, health care systems, and biocultural adaptation".Physical anthropology – study of the physical development of the human species. Psychological anthropology – interdisciplinary subfield of anthropology that studies the interaction of cultural and mental processes.Zooarchaeology – study of faunal remains.Anthrozoology – study of human-animal interaction.Business studies – academic subject combining elements of accountancy, finance, marketing, organizational studies and economicsCivics – study of the theoretical and practical aspects of citizenship, its rights and duties; the duties of citizens to each other as members of a political body and to the government.Cognitive Science – interdisciplinary scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works.Criminology – study of the nature, extent, causes, and control of criminal behavior in both the individual and in society.Cultural studies – academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism.Demography – statistical study of human populations and sub-populations.Development studies – multidisciplinary branch of social science which addresses issues of concern to developing countries.Economics – analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. It aims to explain how economies work and how economic agents interact.Macroeconomics – branch of economics dealing with the performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of the whole economyMicroeconomics – branch of economics that studies the behavior of individual households and firms in making decisions on the allocation of limited resourcesBehavioural economics – Behavioral economics and the related field, behavioral finance, study the effects of social, cognitive and emotional factors on the economic decisions of individuals and institutions and the consequences for market prices, returns and the resource allocation.Bioeconomics – applies the laws of thermodynamics to economic theory Comparative economics – comparative study of different systems of economic organization, such as capitalism, socialism, feudalism and the mixed economy.Socialist economics – economic theories and practices of hypothetical and existing socialist economic systems.Development economics – branch of economics which deals with economic aspects of the development process in low-income countries.Economic geography – study of the location, distribution and spatial organization of economic activities across the world.Economic history – study of economies or economic phenomena in the past.Economic sociology – studies both the social effects and the social causes of various economic phenomena.Energy economics – broad scientific subject area which includes topics related to supply and use of energy in societiesEntrepreneurial Economics – study of the entrepreneur and entrepreneurship within the economy.Environmental economics – subfield of economics concerned with environmental issues.Evolutionary economics – part of mainstream economics as well as heterodox school of economic thought that is inspired by evolutionary biology.Financial economics – branch of economics concerned with "the allocation and deployment of economic resources, both spatially and across time, in an uncertain environment".Heterodox economics – approaches or to schools of economic thought that are considered outside of "mainstream economics" and sometimes contrasted by expositors with neoclassical economics.Green economics – one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risksFeminist economics – diverse area of economic inquiry that highlights the androcentric biases of traditional economics through critical examinations of economic methodology, epistemology, history and empirical study.Industrial organization – field of economics that builds on the theory of the firm in examining the structure of, and boundaries between, firms and markets.International economics – study of the effects upon economic activity of international differences in productive resources and consumer preferences and the institutions that affect them.Institutional economics – study of the role of the evolutionary process and the role of institutions in shaping economic behaviour.Labor economics – seeks to understand the functioning and dynamics of the markets for labour.Law and Economics – application of economic methods to analysis of law. Managerial economics – "application of economic concepts and economic analysis to the problems of formulating rational managerial decisions"Monetary economics – branch of economics that historically prefigured and remains integrally linked to macroeconomics.Neuroeconomics – interdisciplinary field that seeks to explain human decision making, the ability to process multiple alternatives and to choose an optimal course of action.Public finance – study of the role of the government in the economy.Public economics – study of government policy through the lens of economic efficiency and equity.Real estate economics – application of economic techniques to real estate markets.Resource economics – study of supply, demand, and allocation of the Earth's natural resources.Welfare economics – branch of economics that uses microeconomic techniques to evaluate economic well-being, especially relative to competitive general equilibrium within an economy as to economic efficiency and the resulting income distribution associated with it.Political economy – study of the production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process.Socioeconomics – considers behavioral interactions of individuals and groups through social capital and social "markets" (not excluding for example, sorting by marriage) and the formation of social norms.Transport economics – branch of economics that deals with the allocation of resources within the transport sector and has strong linkages with civil engineering.Economic methodology – study of methods, especially the scientific method, in relation to economics, including principles underlying economic reasoning.Computational economics – research discipline at the interface between computer science and economic and management science.Econometrics – application of mathematics and statistical methods to economic dataMathematical economics – application of mathematical methods to represent economic theories and analyze problems posed in economics.Economic statistics – topic in applied statistics that concerns the collection, processing, compilation, dissemination, and analysis of economic data.Time series – sequence of data points, measured typically at successive time instants spaced at uniform time intervals.Experimental economics – application of experimental methods to study economic questions.Education – in the general sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character, or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense, education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills, and values from one generation to another.Environmental studies – interdisciplinary academic field which systematically studies human interaction with the environment.Gender and sexuality studies – field of interdisciplinary study and academic field devoted to gender identity and gendered representation as central categories of analysis.Geography – study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth.Cartography – study and practice of making maps or globes.Human geography – branch of the social sciences that studies the world, its people, communities, and cultures with an emphasis on relations of and across space and place.Critical geography – takes a critical theory (Frankfurt School) approach to the study and analysis of geography.Cultural geography – study of cultural products and norms and their variations across and relations to spaces and places.Feminist geography – approach in human geography which applies the theories, methods and critiques of feminism to the study of the human environment, society and geographical space.Economic geography – study of the location, distribution and spatial organization of economic activities across the world.Development geography – branch of geography with reference to the standard of living and quality of life of its human inhabitants.Historical geography – study of the human, physical, fictional, theoretical, and "real" geographies of the past.Time geography – Political geography & geopolitics – field of human geography that is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures.Strategic geography – concerned with the control of, or access to, spatial areas that affect the security and prosperity of nations.Population geography – study of the ways in which spatial variations in the distribution, composition, migration, and growth of populations are related to the nature of places.Social geography – branch of human geography that is most closely related to social theory in general and sociology in particular, dealing with the relation of social phenomena and its spatial components.Behavioral geography – approach to human geography that examines human behavior using a disaggregate approach.Children's geographies – area of study within human geography and Childhood Studies which involves researching the places and spaces of children's lives.Health geography – application of geographical information, perspectives, and methods to the study of health, disease, and health care.Tourism geography – study of travel and tourism, as an industry and as a social and cultural activity.Urban geography – study of areas which have a high concentration of buildings and infrastructure.Environmental geography – branch of geography that describes the spatial aspects of interactions between humans and the natural world.Physical geography – branch of natural science which deals with the study of processes and patterns in the natural environment like the atmosphere, biosphere and geosphere, as opposed to the cultural or built environment, the domain of human geography.Biogeography – study of the distribution of species (biology), organisms, and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time.Climatology – Atmospheric physics Atmospheric dynamics (category) Palaeoclimatology – study of changes in climate taken on the scale of the entire history of Earth.Coastal geography – study of the dynamic interface between the ocean and the land, incorporating both the physical geography (i.e. coastal geomorphology, geology and oceanography) and the human geography (sociology and history) of the coast.Geomorphology – scientific study of landforms and the processes that shape them.Geodesy – scientific discipline that deals with the measurement and representation of the Earth, including its gravitational field, in a three-dimensional time-varying space.Hydrology – study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water on Earth and other planets, including the hydrologic cycle, water resources and environmental watershed sustainability.Hydrography – mapping (charting) of water topographic features through the measurement of the depths, the tides and currents of a body of water and establishment of the sea, river or lake bed topography and morphology. Glaciology – study of glaciers, or more generally ice and natural phenomena that involve ice.Limnology – study of inland waters.Oceanography – branch of Earth science that studies the ocean.Pedology – study of soils in their natural environment.Landscape ecology – science of studying and improving relationships between ecological processes in the environment and particular ecosystems.Palaeogeography – study of what the geography was in times past.Regional geography – study of world regions.Gerontology – study of the social, psychological and biological aspects of aging.History – discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented.Industrial relations – multidisciplinary field that studies the employment relationship.Information science – interdisciplinary field primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information.International studies – study of the major political, economic, social, cultural and sacral issues that dominate the international agendaLaw – set of rules and principles (laws) by which a society is governed, through enforcement by governmental authorities.Legal management – social sciences discipline that is designed for students interested in the study of State and its elements, Law, Law Practice, Legal Research and Jurisprudence, legal Philosophy, Criminal Justice, Governance, Government structure, Political history and theories, Business Organization and Management, Entrepreneurship, Public Administration and Human Resource Development.Paralegal studies – social sciences discipline that is designed for students interested in the study of State and its elements, Law, Law Practice, Legal Research and Jurisprudence, legal Philosophy, Criminal Justice, Governance, Government structure, Political history and theories, Business Organization and Management, Entrepreneurship, Public Administration and Human Resource Development.Library science – study of issues related to libraries and the information fields.Linguistics – scientific study of natural language.Anthropological linguistics – study of the relations between language and culture and the relations between human biology, cognition and language.Applied linguistics – interdisciplinary field of study that identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems.Biolinguistics – study of the biology and evolution of language.Clinical linguistics and speech and language pathology – sub-discipline of linguistics which involves the application of linguistic theory to the field of Speech-Language Pathology.Cognitive linguistics – branch of linguistics that interprets language in terms of the concepts, sometimes universal, sometimes specific to a particular tongue, which underlie its forms.Comparative linguistics – branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness.Computational linguistics – interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective.Developmental linguistics – study of the development of linguistic ability in an individual, particularly the acquisition of language in childhood.language acquisition – the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words to communicate.Dialectology – scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics.dialectometry – the study of high levels of structure in geographical dialect networks.Discourse analysis – general term for a number of approaches to analyzing use of written, oral or sign language or any significant semiotic event. Etymology – study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.Evolutionary linguistics – the scientific study of both the origins and development of language as well as the cultural evolution of languages.Forensic linguistics – application of linguistic knowledge, methods and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime investigation, trial, and judicial procedure.Geolinguistics – branch of human geography that studies the geographic distribution of language or its constituent elements.Historical linguistics – study of language change.Lexis – total vocabulary or lexicon having items of lexical, rather than grammatical, meaning.Linguistic typology – subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features.Morphology – identification, analysis and description of the structure of a given language's morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context (words in a lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology).Neurolinguistics – study of the neural mechanisms in the human brain that control the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language.Philology – study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Phonetics – branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or the equivalent aspects of sign.Phonology – branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in languages.Phraseology – study of set or fixed expressions, such as idioms, phrasal verbs, and other types of multi-word lexical units (often collectively referred to as phrasemes), in which the component parts of the expression take on a meaning more specific than or otherwise not predictable from the sum of their meanings when used independently.Pragmatics – subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning.Psycholinguistics – study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language.Sociolinguistics – descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society.Speech science – Speech science refers to the study of production, transmission and perception of speech. Speech science involves anatomy, in particular the anatomy of the oro-facial region and neuroanatomy, physiology, and acoustics.Stylistics – study and interpretation of texts from a linguistic perspective.Syntax – "the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages."Semantics – study of meaning.Writing systems and orthography – representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols (known as a writing system).Management – act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively.Media studies – academic discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history and effects of various media; in particular, the 'mass media'.Communication studies – academic field that deals with processes of human communication, commonly defined as the sharing of symbols to create meaning.Philosophy – study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Academic philosophy is considered a science by some. The role of philosophy is also a philosophical question.Philosophy of language – is concerned with four central problems: the nature of meaning, language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language and reality.Philosophy of information – (PI) is the area of research that studies conceptual issues arising at the intersection of computer science, information science, information technology, and philosophy.Political philosophy – is the study of topics such as politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority.Epistemology – study of how we know what we know; study of the nature and scope of knowledge.Ethics – major branch of philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life. It is significantly broader than the common conception of analyzing right and wrong.Logic – formal science of using reasonPhilosophy of mind – branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain.Philosophy of science – questions the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science; questions the use and merit of science; sometimes overlapsmetaphysics and epistemology by questioning whether scientific results are actually a study of truth.Social philosophy – is the study of questions about social behavior and interpretations of society and social institutions in terms of ethical values rather than empirical relations.Aesthetics – is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with the creation and appreciation of beauty.Philosophy of mathematics – is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. The aim of the philosophy of mathematics is to provide an account of the nature and methodology of mathematics and to understand the place of mathematics in people's lives.Philosophy of education – Philosophy of education can refer to either the academic field of applied philosophy or to one of any educational philosophies that promote a specific type or vision of education, and/or which examine the definition, goals and meaning of education.Political science – social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government, and politics.Comparative politics – field and a method used in political science, characterized by an empirical approach based on the comparative method.Game theory – study of strategic decision making.Geopolitics – theory that describes the relation between politics and territory whether on local or international scale.political geography – field of human geography that is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures. Ideology – set of ideas that constitute one's goals, expectations, and actions.Political economy – Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy. It developed in the 18th century as the study of the economies of states, polities, hence political economy.Political psychology, bureaucratic, administrative and judicial behaviour – Psephology – branch of political science which deals with the study and scientific analysis of elections.Voting systems – methods by which voters make a choice between options, often in an election or on a policy referendum.Public administration – houses the implementation of government policy and an academic discipline that studies this implementation and that prepares civil servants for this work.Public policy – generally the principled guide to action taken by the administrative or executive branches of the state with regard to a class of issues in a manner consistent with law and institutional customs. Local government studies – form of public administration which in a majority of contexts, exists as the lowest tier of administration within the a given state.International politics – study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multinational corporations (MNCs).International relations theory – study of international relations from a theoretical perspective; it attempts to provide a conceptual framework upon which international relations can be analyzed.Psychology – science of behavior and mental processesApplied psychology – use of psychological principles and theories to overcome problems in other areas, such as mental health, business management, education, health, product design, ergonomics, and law.Psychological testing – field characterized by the use of samples of behavior in order to assess psychological construct(s), such as cognitive and emotional functioning, about a given individual.Clinical psychology – integration of science, theory and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development.Community psychology – Sense of community Social capitalConsumer behaviour – study of when, why, how, and where people do or do not buy a product.Counseling psychology – psychological specialty that encompasses research and applied work in several broad domains: counseling process and outcome; supervision and training; career development and counseling; and prevention and health.Educational psychology – study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations.Forensic psychology – intersection between psychology and the courtroom—criminal, civil, family and Federal.Health psychology – concerned with understanding how biological, psychological, environmental, and cultural factors are involved in physical health and illness.Industrial and organizational psychology – scientific study of employees, workplaces, and organizations.Legal psychology – involves empirical, psychological research of the law, legal institutions, and people who come into contact with the law.Media psychology – seeks an understanding of how people perceive, interpret, use, and respond to a media-rich world.Occupational health psychology – concerned with the psychosocial characteristics of workplaces that contribute to the development of health-related problems in people who work.Pastoral psychology – application of psychological methods and interpretive frameworks to religious traditions, as well as to both religious and irreligious individuals.Political psychology – interdisciplinary academic field dedicated to understanding political science, politicians and political behavior through the use of psychological theories.Psychometrics – field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, personality traits, and educational measurement.School psychology – field that applies principles of clinical psychology and educational psychology to the diagnosis and treatment of children's and adolescents' behavioral and learning problems.systems psychology – branch of applied psychology that studies human behaviour and experience in complex systems.Traffic psychology – study of the behavior of road users and the psychological processes underlying that behavior as well as to the relationship between behavior and accidentsBehavior analysis – philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns or modifying the environment.Biopsychology – application of the principles of biology (in particular neurobiology), to the study of physiological, genetic, and developmental mechanisms of behavior in human and non-human animals.Cognitive psychology – subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.Clinical psychology – integration of science, theory and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development.Cultural psychology – field of psychology which assumes the idea that culture and mind are inseparable, and that psychological theories grounded in one culture are likely to be limited in applicability when applied to a different culture.Developmental psychology – scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span.Educational psychology – study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations.Evolutionary psychology – approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective.Experimental psychology – application of experimental methods to the study of behavior and the processes that underlie it.Forensic psychology – intersection between psychology and the courtroom—criminal, civil, family and Federal.Health psychology – concerned with understanding how biological, psychological, environmental, and cultural factors are involved in physical health and illness.Humanistic psychology – psychological perspective which rose to prominence in the mid-20th century in the context of the tertiary sector beginning to produce in the most developed countries in the world more than the secondary sector was producing, for the first time in human history demanding creativity and new understanding of human capital.Industrial and organizational psychology – scientific study of employees, workplaces, and organizations.Music therapy – allied health profession and one of the expressive therapies, consisting of an interpersonal process in which a trained music therapist uses music to help clients to improve or maintain their health.Neuropsychology – studies the structure and function of the brain as they relate to specific psychological processes and behaviors.Personality psychology – branch of psychology that studies personality and individual differences.Psychometrics – field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, personality traits, and educational measurement.Psychology of religion – application of psychological methods and interpretive frameworks to religious traditions, as well as to both religious and irreligious individuals.Psychophysics – quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they affect.Public administration – houses the implementation of government policy and an academic discipline that studies this implementation and that prepares civil servants for this work.Social work – professional and academic discipline that seeks to improve the quality of life and well being of an individual, group, or community by intervening through research, policy, community organizing, direct practice, and teaching on behalf of those afflicted with poverty or any real or perceived social injustices and violations of their human rights.Sociology – studies society using various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to understand human social activity, from the micro level of individual agency and interaction to the macro level of systems and social structure.Criminology – study of the nature, extent, causes, and control of criminal behavior in both the individual and in society.Demography – statistical study of human populations and sub-populations.Urban and rural sociology - the analysis of social life in metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas.

Here is a very complete analysis that I mostly agree with. This comes from “Medium.” While I agree with many conclusions, there are some that I don’t agree with.73 Mind-Blowing Implications of a Driverless Future“Uber just announced that it just ordered 24,000 self-driving Volvos. Tesla just released an electric, long-haul tractor trailer with extraordinary technical specs (range, performance) and self-driving capabilities (UPS just preordered 125!). And, Tesla just announced what will probably be the quickest production car ever made — perhaps the fastest. It will go zero to sixty in about the time it takes you to read zero to sixty. And, of course, it will be able to drive itself. The future is quickly becoming now. Google just ordered thousands of Chryslers for its self-driving fleet (that are already on the roads in AZ).In September of 2016, Uber had just rolled out its first self-driving taxis in Pittsburgh, Tesla and Mercedes were rolling out limited self-driving capabilities and cities around the world were negotiating with companies who want to bring self-driving cars and trucks to their cities. Since then, all of the major car companies have announced significant steps towards mostly or entirely electric vehicles, more investments have been made in autonomous vehicles, driverless trucks now seem to be leading rather than following in terms of the first large scale implementations and there’ve been a few more incidents (i.e. accidents).I believe that the timeframe for significant adoption of this technology has shrunk in the past year as technology has gotten better faster and as the trucking industry has increased its level of interest and investment.I believe that my daughter, who is now just over 1 years old, will never have to learn to drive or own a car.The impact of driverless vehicles will be profound and impact almost every part of our lives.What could happen when cars and trucks drive themselves?1. People won’t own their own cars. Transport will be delivered as a service from companies who own fleets of self-driving vehicles. There are so many technical, economic, safety advantages to the transportation-as-a-service that this change may come much faster than most people expect. Owning a vehicle as an individual will become a novelty for collectors and maybe competitive racers.2. Software/technology companies will own more of the world’s economy as companies like Uber, Google and Amazon turn transportation into a pay-as-you-go service. Software will indeed eat this world. Over time, they’ll own so much data about people, patterns, routes and obstacles that new entrants will have huge barriers to enter the market3. Without government intervention (or some sort of organized movement), there will be a tremendous transfer of wealth to a very small number of people who own the software, battery/power manufacturing, vehicle servicing and charging/power generation/maintenance infrastructure. There will be massive consolidation of companies serving these markets as scale and efficiency will become even more valuable. Cars (perhaps they’ll be renamed with some sort-of-clever acronym) will become like the routers that run the Internet — most consumers won’t know or care who made them or who owns them.4. Vehicle designs will change radically — vehicles won’t need to withstand crashes in the same way, all vehicles will be electric (self-driving + software + service providers = all electric). They may look different, come in very different shapes and sizes, maybe attach to each other in some situations. There will likely be many significant innovations in materials used for vehicle construction — for example, tires and brakes will be re-optimized with very different assumptions, especially around variability of loads and much more controlled environments. The bodies will likely be primarily made of composites (like carbon fiber and fiberglass) and 3D printed. Electric vehicles with no driver controls will require 1/10th or fewer the number of parts (perhaps even 1/100th) and thus will be quicker to produce and require much less labor. There may even be designs with almost no moving parts (other than wheels and motors, obviously).5. Vehicles will mostly swap batteries rather than serve as the host of battery charging. Batteries will be charged in distributed and highly optimized centers — likely owned by the same company as the vehicles or another national vendor. There may be some entrepreneurial opportunity and a marketplace for battery charging and swapping, but this industry will likely be consolidated quickly. The batteries will be exchanged without human intervention — likely in a carwash-like drive thru6. Vehicles (being electric) will be able to provide portable power for a variety of purposes (which will also be sold as a service) — construction job sites (why use generators), disaster/power failures, events, etc. They may even temporarily or permanently replace power distribution networks (i.e. power lines) for remote locations — imagine a distributed power generation network with autonomous vehicles providing “last mile” services to some locations7. Driver’s licenses will slowly go away as will the Department of Motor Vehicles in most states. Other forms of ID may emerge as people no longer carry driver’s licenses. This will probably correspond with the inevitable digitization of all personal identification — via prints, retina scans or other biometric scanning8. There won’t be any parking lots or parking spaces on roads or in buildings. Garages will be repurposed — maybe as mini loading docks for people and deliveries. Aesthetics of homes and commercial buildings will change as parking lots and spaces go away. There will be a multi-year boom in landscaping and basement and garage conversions as these spaces become available9. Traffic policing will become redundant. Police transport will also likely change quite a bit. Unmanned police vehicles may become more common and police officers may use commercial transportation to move around routinely. This may dramatically change the nature of policing, with newfound resources from the lack of traffic policing and dramatically less time spent moving around10. There will be no more local mechanics, car dealers, consumer car washes, auto parts stores or gas stations. Towns that have been built around major thoroughfares will change or fade11. The auto insurance industry as we know it will go away (as will the significant investing power of the major players of this industry). Most car companies will go out of business, as will most of their enormous supplier networks. There will be many fewer net vehicles on the road (maybe 1/10th, perhaps even less) that are also more durable, made of fewer parts and much more commoditized12. Traffic lights and signs will become obsolete. Vehicles may not even have headlights as infrared and radar take the place of the human light spectrum. The relationship between pedestrians (and bicycles) and cars and trucks will likely change dramatically. Some will come in the form of cultural and behavioral changes as people travel in groups more regularly and walking or cycling becomes practical in places where it isn’t today13. Multi-modal transportation will become a more integrated and normal part of our ways of moving around. In other words, we’ll often take one type of vehicle to another, especially when traveling longer distances. With coordination and integration, the elimination of parking and more deterministic patterns, it will become ever-more efficient to combine modes of transport14. The power grid will change. Power stations via alternative power sources will become more competitive and local. Consumers and small businesses with solar panels, small scale tidal or wave power generators, windmills and other local power generation will be able to sell KiloWattHours to the companies who own the vehicles. This will change “net metering” rules and possibly upset the overall power delivery model. It might even be the beginning of truly distributed power creation and transport. There will likely be a significant boom in innovation in power production and delivery models. Over time, ownership of these services will probably be consolidated across a very small number of companies15. Traditional petroleum products (and other fossil fuels) will become much less valuable as electric cars replace fuel powered vehicles and as alternative energy sources become more viable with portability of power (transmission and conversion eat tons of power). There are many geopolitical implications to this possible shift. As implications of climate change become ever-clearer and present, these trends will likely accelerate. Petroleum will continue to be valuable for making plastics and other derived materials, but will not be burned for energy at any scale. Many companies, oil-rich countries and investors have already begun accommodating for these changes16. Entertainment funding will change as the auto industry’s ad spending goes away. Think about how many ads you see or hear about cars, car financing, car insurance, car accessories and car dealers. There are likely to be many other structural and cultural changes that come from the dramatic changes to the transportation industry. We’ll stop saying “shift into high gear” and other driving-related colloquialisms as the references will be lost on future generations17. The recent corporate tax rate reductions in the “..Act to Provide for Reconciliation Pursuant to Titles II and V of the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2018” will accelerate investments in automation including self-driving vehicles and other forms of transportation automation. Flush with new cash and incentives to invest capital soon, many businesses will invest in technology and solutions that reduce their labor costs.18. The car financing industry will go away, as will the newly huge derivative market for packaged sub-prime auto loans which will likely itself cause a version of the 2008–2009 financial crisis as it blows up.19. Increases in unemployment, increased student loan, vehicle and other debt defaults could quickly spiral into a full depression. The world that emerges on the other side will likely have even more dramatic income and wealth stratification as entry level jobs related to transportation and the entire supply chain of the existing transportation system go away. The convergence of this with hyper-automation in production and service delivery (AI, robotics, low-cost computing, business consolidation, etc) may permanently change how societies are organized and how people spend their time20. There will be many new innovations in luggage and bags as people no longer keep stuff in cars and loading and unloading packages from vehicles becomes much more automated. The traditional trunk size and shape will change. Trailers or other similar detachable devices will become much more commonplace to add storage space to vehicles. Many additional on demand services will become available as transportation for goods and services becomes more ubiquitous and cheaper. Imagine being able to design, 3D print and put on an outfit as you travel to a party or the office (if you’re still going to an office)…21. Consumers will have more money as transportation (a major cost, especially for lower income people and families) gets much cheaper and ubiquitous — though this may be offset by dramatic reductions in employment as technology changes many times faster than people’s ability to adapt to new types of work22. Demand for taxi and truck drivers will go down, eventually to zero. Someone born today might not understand what a truck driver is or even understand why someone would do that job — much like people born in the last 30 years don’t understand how someone could be employed as a switchboard operator23. The politics will get ugly as lobbyists for the auto and oil industries unsuccessfully try to stop the driverless car. They’ll get even uglier as the federal government deals with assuming huge pension obligations and other legacy costs associated with the auto industry. My guess is that these pension obgligations won’t ultimately be honored and certain communities will be devastated. The same may be true of pollution clean-up efforts around the factories and chemical plants that were once major components of the vehicle supply chain24. The new players in vehicle design and manufacturing will be a mix of companies like Uber, Google and Amazon and companies you don’t yet know. There will probably be 2 or 3 major players who control >80% of the customer-facing transportation market. There may become API-like access to these networks for smaller players — much like app marketplaces for iPhone and Android. However, the majority of the revenue will flow to a few large players as it does today to Apple and Google for smartphones25. Supply chains will be disrupted as shipping changes. Algorithms will allow trucks to be fuller. Excess (latent) capacity will be priced cheaper. New middlemen and warehousing models will emerge. As shipping gets cheaper, faster and generally easier, retail storefronts will continue to lose footing in the marketplace.26. The role of malls and other shopping areas will continue to shift — to be replaced by places people go for services, not products. There will be virtually no face to face purchases of physical goods.27. Amazon and/or a few other large players will put Fedex, UPS and USPS out of business as their transportation network becomes orders of magnitude more cost efficient than existing models — largely from a lack of legacy costs like pensions, higher union labor costs and regulations (especially USPS) that won’t keep up with the pace of technology change. 3D printing will also contribute to this as many day-to-day products are printed at home rather than purchased.28. The same vehicles will often transport people and goods as algorithms optimize all routes. And, off-peak utilization will allow for other very inexpensive delivery options. In other words, packages will be increasingly delivered at night. Add autonomous drone aircraft to this mix and there’ll be very little reason to believe that traditional carriers (Fedex, USPS, UPS, etc) will survive at all.29. Roads will be much emptier and smaller (over time) as self-driving cars need much less space between them (a major cause of traffic today), people will share vehicles more than today (carpooling), traffic flow will be better regulated and algorithmic timing (i.e. leave at 10 versus 9:30) will optimize infrastructure utilization. Roads will also likely be smoother and turns optimally banked for passenger comfort. High speed underground and above ground tunnels (maybe integrating hyperloop technology or this novel magnetic track solution) will become the high speed network for long haul travel.30. Short hop domestic air travel may be largely displaced by multi-modal travel in autonomous vehicles. This may be countered by the advent of lower cost, more automated air travel. This too may become part of integrated, multi-modal transportation.31. Roads will wear out much more slowly with fewer vehicle miles, lighter vehicles (with less safety requirements). New road materials will be developed that drain better, last longer and are more environmentally friendly. These materials might even be power generating (solar or reclamation from vehicle kinetic energy). At the extreme, they may even be replaced by radically different designs — tunnels, magnetic tracks, other hyper-optimized materials32. Premium vehicle services will have more compartmentalized privacy, more comfort, good business features (quiet, wifi, bluetooth for each passenger, etc), massage services and beds for sleeping. They may also allow for meaningful in-transit real and virtual meetings. This will also likely include aromatherapy, many versions of in-vehicle entertainment systems and even virtual passengers to keep you company.33. Exhilaration and emotion will almost entirely leave transportation. People won’t brag about how nice, fast, comfortable their cars are. Speed will be measured by times between end points, not acceleration, handling or top speed.34. Cities will become much more dense as fewer roads and vehicles will be needed and transport will be cheaper and more available. The “walkable city” will continue to be more desirable as walking and biking become easier and more commonplace. When costs and timeframes of transit change, so will the dynamics of who lives and works where.35. People will know when they leave, when they’ll get where they’re going. There will be few excuses for being late. We will be able to leave later and cram more into a day. We’ll also be able to better track kids, spouses, employees and so forth. We’ll be able to know exactly when someone will arrive and when someone needs to leave to be somewhere at a particular time.36. There will be no more DUI/OUI offenses. Restaurants and bars will sell more alcohol. People will consume more as they no longer need to consider how to get home and will be able to consume inside vehicles37. We’ll have less privacy as interior cameras and usage logs will track when and where we go and have gone. Exterior cameras will also probably record surroundings, including people. This may have a positive impact on crime, but will open up many complex privacy issues and likely many lawsuits. Some people may find clever ways to game the system — with physical and digital disguises and spoofing.38. Many lawyers will lose sources of revenue — traffic offenses, crash litigation will reduce dramatically. Litigation will more likely be “big company versus big company” or “individuals against big companies”, not individuals against each other. These will settle more quickly with less variability. Lobbyists will probably succeed in changing the rules of litigation to favor the bigger companies, further reducing the legal revenue related to transportation. Forced arbitration and other similar clauses will become an explicit component of our contractual relationship with transportation providers.39. Some countries will nationalize parts of their self-driving transportation networks which will result in lower costs, fewer disruptions and less innovation.40. Cities, towns and police forces will lose revenue from traffic tickets, tolls (likely replaced, if not eliminated) and fuel tax revenues drop precipitously. These will probably be replaced by new taxes (probably on vehicle miles). These may become a major political hot-button issue differentiating parties as there will probably be a range of regressive versus progressive tax models. Most likely, this will be a highly regressive tax in the US, as fuel taxes are today.41. Some employers and/or government programs will begin partially or entirely subsidizing transportation for employees and/or people who need the help. The tax treatment of this perk will also be very political.42. Ambulance and other emergency vehicles will likely be used less and change in nature. More people will take regular autonomous vehicles instead of ambulances. Ambulances will transport people faster. Same may be true of military vehicles.43. There will be significant innovations in first response capabilities as dependencies on people become reduced over time and as distributed staging of capacity becomes more common.44. Airports will allow vehicles right into the terminals, maybe even onto the tarmac, as increased controls and security become possible. Terminal design may change dramatically as transportation to and from becomes normalized and integrated. The entire nature of air travel may change as integrated, multi-modal transport gets more sophisticated. Hyper-loops, high speed rail, automated aircraft and other forms of rapid travel will gain as traditional hub and spoke air travel on relatively large planes lose ground.45. Innovative app-like marketplaces will open up for in-transit purchases, ranging from concierge services to food to exercise to merchandise to education to entertainment purchases. VR will likely play a large role in this. With integrated systems, VR (via headsets or screens or holograms) will become standard fare for trips more than a few minutes in duration.46. Transportation will become more tightly integrated and packaged into many services — dinner includes the ride, hotel includes local transport, etc. This may even extend to apartments, short-term rentals (like AirBnB) and other service providers.47. Local transport of nearly everything will become ubiquitous and cheap — food, everything in your local stores. Drones will likely be integrated into vehicle designs to deal with “last few feet” on pickup and delivery. This will accelerate the demise of traditional retail stores and their local economic impact.48. Biking and walking will become easier, safer and more common as roads get safer and less congested, new pathways (reclaimed from roads/parking lots/roadside parking) come online and with cheap, reliable transport available as a backup.49. More people will participate in vehicle racing (cars, off road, motorcycles) to replace their emotional connection to driving. Virtual racing experiences may also grow in popularity as fewer people have the real experience of driving.50. Many, many fewer people will be injured or killed on roads, though we’ll expect zero and be disproportionately upset when accidents do happen. Hacking and non-malicious technical issues will replace traffic as the main cause of delays. Over time, resilience will increase in the systems.51. Hacking of vehicles will be a serious issue. New software and communications companies and technologies will emerge to address these issues. We’ll see the first vehicle hacking and its consequences. Highly distributed computing, perhaps using some form of blockchain, will likely become part of the solution as a counterbalance to systemic catastrophes — such as many vehicles being affected simultaneously. There will probably be a debate about whether and how law enforcement can control, observe and restrict transportation.52. Many roads and bridges will be privatized as a small number of companies control most transport and make deals with municipalities. Over time, government may entirely stop funding roads, bridges and tunnels. There will be a significant legislative push to privatize more and more of the transportation network. Much like Internet traffic, there will likely become tiers of prioritization and some notion of in-network versus out-of-network travel and tolls for interconnection. Regulators will have a tough time keeping up with these changes. Most of this will be transparent to end users, but will probably create enormous barriers to entry for transportation start-ups and ultimately reduce options for consumers.53. Innovators will come along with many awesome uses for driveways and garages that no longer contain cars.54. There will be a new network of clean, safe, pay-to-use restrooms and other services (food, drinks, etc) that become part of the value-add of competing service providers55. Mobility for seniors and people with disabilities will be greatly improved (over time)56. Parents will have more options to move around their kids on their own. Premium secure end-to-end children’s transport services will likely emerge. This may change many family relationships and increase the accessibility of services to parents and children. It may also further stratify the experiences of families with higher income and those with lower income.57. Person to person movement of goods will become cheaper and open up new markets — think about borrowing a tool or buying something on Craigslist. Latent capacity will make transporting goods very inexpensive. This may also open up new opportunities for P2P services at a smaller scale — like preparing food or cleaning clothes.58. People will be able to eat/drink in transit (like on a train or plane), consume more information (reading, podcasts, video, etc). This will open up time for other activities and perhaps increased productivity.59. Some people may have their own “pods” to get into which will then be picked up by an autonomous vehicle, moved between vehicles automatically for logistic efficiencies. These may come in varieties of luxury and quality — the Louis Vuitton pod may replace the Louis Vuitton trunk as the mark of luxury travel60. There will be no more getaway vehicles or police vehicle chases.61. Vehicles will likely be filled to the brim with advertising of all sorts (much of which you could probably act on in-route), though there will probably be ways to pay more to have an ad free experience. This will include highly personalized en route advertising that is particularly relevant to who you are, where you’re going.62. These innovations will make it to the developing world where congestion today is often remarkably bad and hugely costly. Pollution levels will come down dramatically. Even more people will move to the cities. Productivity levels will go up. Fortunes will be made as these changes happen. Some countries and cities will be transformed for the better. Some others will likely experience hyper-privatization, consolidation and monopoly-like controls. This may play out much like the roll-out of cell services in these countries — fast, consolidated and inexpensive.63. Payment options will be greatly expanded, with packaged deals like cell phones, pre-paid models, pay-as-you-go models being offered. Digital currency transacted automatically via phones/devices will probably quickly replace traditional cash or credit card payments.64. There will likely be some very clever innovations for movement of pets, equipment, luggage and other non-people items. Autonomous vehicles in the medium future (10–20 years) may have radically different designs that support carrying significantly more payload.65. Some creative marketers will offer to partially or fully subsidize rides where customers deliver value — by taking surveys, by participating in virtual focus groups, by promoting their brand via social media, etc.66. Sensors of all sorts will be embedded in vehicles that will have secondary uses — like improving weather forecasting, crime detection and prevention, finding fugitives, infrastructure conditions (such as potholes). This data will be monetized, likely by the companies who own the transportation services.67. Companies like Google and Facebook will add to their databases everything about customer movements and locations. Unlike GPS chips that only tell them where someone is at the moment (and where they’ve been), autonomous vehicle systems will know where you’re going in real-time (and with whom).68. Autonomous vehicles will create some new jobs and opportunities for entrepreneurs. However, these will be off-set many times by extraordinary job losses by nearly everyone in the transportation value chain today. In the autonomous future, a large number of jobs will go away. This includes drivers (which is in many states today the most common job), mechanics, gas station employees, most of the people who make cars and car parts or support those who do (due to huge consolidation of makers and supply chains and manufacturing automation), the marketing supply chain for vehicles, many people who work on and build roads/bridges, employees of vehicle insurance and financing companies (and their partners/suppliers), toll booth operators (most of whom have already been displaced), many employees of restaurants that support travelers, truck stops, retail workers and all the people whose businesses support these different types of companies and workers.69. There will be some hardcore hold-outs who really like driving. But, over time, they’ll become a less statistically relevant voting group as younger people, who’ve never driven, will outnumber them. At first, this may be a 50 state regulated system — where driving yourself may actually become illegal in some states in the next 10 years while other states may continue to allow it for a long time. Some states will try, unsuccessfully, to block autonomous vehicles.70. There will be lots of discussions about new types of economic systems — from universal basic income to new variations of socialism to a more regulated capitalist system — that will result from the enormous impacts of autonomous vehicles.71. In the path to a truly driverless future, there will be a number of key tipping points. At the moment, freight delivery may push autonomous vehicle use sooner than people transport. Large trucking companies may have the financial means and legislative influence to make rapid, dramatic changes. They are also better positioned to support hybrid approaches where only parts of their fleet or parts of the routes are automated.72. Autonomous vehicles will radically change the power centers of the world. They will be the beginning of the end of burning hydrocarbons. The powerful interests who control these industries today will fight viciously to stop this. There may even be wars to slow down this process as oil prices start to plummet and demand dries up.73. Autonomous vehicles will continue to play a larger role in all aspects of war — from surveillance to troop/robot movement to logistics support to actual engagement. Drones will be complemented by additional on-the-ground, in-space, in-the-water and under-the-water autonomous vehicles.Note: My original article was inspired by a presentation by Ryan Chin, CEO of Optimus Ridespeak at an MIT event about autonomous vehicles. He really got me thinking about how profound these advances could be to our lives.”Let me know in comments which ones you agree with, and disagree with.