Program & Abstracts (PDF)

Paper & Presentation

Workshop sponsors:
American Society of Civil Engineering’s Engineering Mechanics Division
Joint Committee on Structural Safety
The John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center

Organizing committee:
Jack Baker, Stanford University, USA
Bruce Ellingwood, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Michael Faber, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

Aim of the workshop
Engineering design requirements are created with the intention to implicitly or explicitly ensure that structures achieve an acceptable level of safety. Developments in performance-based engineering, structural reliability and decision theory have enabled researchers to better predict the reliability of designed structures, and to make design decisions based on the risks associated with failures. Fully utilizing these abilities requires that criteria for risk acceptability be known or identifiable, and that affected parties be able to understand these risks.

The following topics fall within the scope of this workshop:

• Identifying or defining target levels of acceptable risk
• Criteria for risk acceptance in design of structures
• Resolving apparent variations in societal acceptance of risks from varying sources
• Risk- and reliability-based calibration of design requirements (i.e., design codes)
• Fixed reliability criteria versus cost/benefit analysis in system design
• Quantifying uncertainties in risk assessments
• Quantifying failure consequences
• Dealing with low-probability, high-consequence events in risk assessment
• Case studies in risk assessment
• Risk communication

This workshop is aimed at gathering experts in the field for the purpose of identifying state-of-the-art practices. At the conclusion of the workshop, a discussion will be held to identify points of consensus as well as issues requiring further consideration.

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