Applied Civil Engineering Risk Analysis Second Edition

Abstract

fundamental applied probability and reliability methods within one term of study so that, as the course outcome, students can perform first-order probability of failure analysis on Civil Engineering problems. To achieve this outcome I present a simplified or streamlined approach to the material: • Only basic necessary statistical methods are presented, focusing on an intuitive understanding of the data and what it can tell us about past events. • Probability is presented in a systematic manner to make solving the often tricky probability problems more tractable. • Only the normal and lognormal distributions are used in this text because of their useful mathematical properties and because they can often approximate a solution adequately for a first-order analysis. • Functions of random variables are presented in a canonical manner to make solving straightforward. • A comprehensive set of reliability methods is presented, with emphasis on methods that can be solved with minimal background in higher math. • The tools of decision analysis, systems analysis, and other related topics are presented in an applied and usable manner. • Many examples covering a wide range of problems are presented. New in this second edition are: more example problems, numerical solutions presented in both MATLAB and R, and new chapters on spatial variability and Bayesian updating. My hope for this text is that: (1) Readers are left with an appreciation of the uncertainty that exists in Civil Engineering problems and are able to quantify and treat the uncertainty in a proper way to enhance Civil Engineering design, and