Open Access Review Article

Resilience and Uncertainty in Engineering Decisions

Daniel A Vallero*

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University, USA

Corresponding Author

Received Date: August 14, 2019;  Published Date: August 21, 2019

Abstract

The safety, health and welfare of the public hold prominence in engineering. No matter the discipline, the public is the engineer’s ultimate and most important client. Decisions regarding types and levels of environmental and public health protection are usually driven and constrained according to the amount of risk removed or added by an action or policy. Risk assessment documents contain the scientific and technical information that underpins these risk-based decisions. A retrospective risk assessment, such as one imbedded in a root cause analysis, attempts to quantify the amount of risk introduced by a previous action. Conversely, a prospective risk assessment predicts the types and amounts of risk that is being and could be added or prevented by an action.

Keywords: Risk; Reliability; Resilience; Precautionary principle; Reliability function; Failure rate; Uncertainty; Pollutant; Treatment technology

Citation
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