Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering

Under the pressure of harsh environmental conditions and natural hazards, large parts of the world population are struggling to maintain their livelihoods. Population growth, increasing land utilization and shrinking natural resources have led to an increasing demand of improved efficiency of existing technologies and the development of new ones. Additionally, growing complexities of societal functionalities andinterdependencies among infrastructures and urban habitats amplify consequences of malfunctions and failures. Malevolence, sustainable developments and climatic changes have more recently been added to the list of challenges. Over the last decades, substantial progress has been made in assessing and quantifying risks. However, with regard to the broader utilization of risk assessment as a means for societal strategic and operational planning, there is still a great need for further development.
Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering contains the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering (ICASP11, Zürich, Switzerland, 1-4 August 2011). The book focuses not only on the more traditional technical issues, but also emphasizes the societal context of the decision making problems including the interaction between stakeholders. This holistic perspective supports the enhanced and sustainable allocation of limited resources for the improvement of safety, environment and economy. The book is of interest to researchers and scientists working in the field of risk and reliability in engineering; to professionals and engineers, including insurance and consulting companies working with natural hazards, design, operation and maintenance of civil engineering and industrial facilities; and to decision makers and professionals in the public sector, including nongovernmental organisations responsible for risk management in the public domain, e.g. building authorities, the health and safety executives, the United Nations and the World Economic Forum.

Preface Editor’s forewordOrganizationConference organizationSponsors
Applications (1-6)
Applications and new developments of system reliability assessment (theory)
Bayesian networks for engineering risk analysis
Bridge traffic loading
Decision analysis
Fuzzy analysis and soft computing methods in reliability assessment and optimization
Life-cycle analysis
Maintenance and safety of aging infrastructure
Meta-models/surrogate models for uncertainty propagation, sensitivity and reliability analysisModel selection, aggregation and testing for probabilistic seismic hazard assessment
Model selection, aggregation and testing for probabilistic seismic hazard assessment
Modelling for Risk management in construction projects
Multiple hazards risk assessment and mitigation
Natural hazards modeling
Performance-based design for structures subject to natural hazard
Probabilistic calibration of codes
Probabilistic methods for the assessment of existing concrete structures
Probabilistic methods in hydraulic and spatial structural analysis
Probabilistic modeling in engineering
Probabilistic modelling of the behaviour of timber in structures
Probabilistic models and methods for risk assessment of lifeline networks and decision support
Probabilistic seismic hazard analysis
Progresses and challenges in probabilistic modeling of tropical storm risks
Recent advances in geotechnical risk and reliability
Reliability methods
Reliability of marine energy converters
Risk and reliability analysis for interdependent infrastructure systems
Risk assessment
Risk assessment and decision support systems for interdependent lifeline infrastructures
Risk-based assessment of climate change adaptation strategies for infrastructure
Robustness of structures
Social perspectives for hazards decision
Spatial probabilistic modeling of deterioration and inspection
Statistical investigations and probabilistic modeling
Stochastic models and simulation of earthquake ground motions
Structural reliability
The treatment of uncertainties in large-scale stochastic systems
Uncertainty and imprecision in geotechnical and structural engineering
Uncertainty, statistics and probability