Sharif Digital Repository

This paper presents a new set of reliability sensitivity measures. The purpose is to identify the optimal manner in which to mitigate risk to civil infrastructure, and reduce model uncertainty in order to improve risk estimates. Three measures are presented. One identifies the infrastructure components that should be prioritized for retrofit. Another measure identifies the infrastructure that should be prioritized for more refined modeling. The third measure identifies the models that should be prioritized in research to improve models, for example by gathering new data. The developments are presented in the context of a region with 622 buildings that are subjected to seismicity from several... 

Reliability methods are employed in this paper to analyze the seismic risk to the Vancouver metropolitan region in Canada. The use of reliability methods contrasts with several contemporary approaches for risk analysis. In this paper, two analysis approaches are presented and implemented in a new computer program. One utilizes the first-order and second-order reliability methods together with a hazard combination technique. The other is a sampling-based method that repeatedly generates damage scenarios in the time period of interest. Both strategies employ the same collection of probabilistic models for seismic risk analysis. While the models are presented in the companion paper, this paper... 

This paper puts forward a framework for optimal mitigation of regional risk to enhance the resilience of civil infrastructure. To meet this objective, probabilistic models, methods, and software are developed and applied. The work is conducted within a new reliability-based approach, in which reliability methods compute risk. This contrasts several contemporary approaches for risk analysis. Risk, in this context, denotes the probability of exceeding monetary loss. Evaluating such probabilities requires probabilistic models for hazards, response, damage, and loss. This motivates the following contributions in this paper. First, a new computer program is developed that is tailored to conduct... 

Engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts are commonly used for the construction of oil and gas production facilities. These projects are subjected to many uncertainties. EPC contractors often assume most of the project risks. Several studies have focused on the identification and analysis of EPC project risks. However, they generally fail to define appropriate and effective risk management strategies. The objective of this study is to define efficient risk mitigation strategies that can be utilized in EPC oil and gas projects. A comprehensive review of literature was conducted to identify the risks in EPC projects. Experts' opinion were used to analyze and categorize these... 

A web-based system is designed and implemented as a risk communication tool to incentivize the public to take seismic risk mitigation measures. Risk denotes the expected monetary and social losses herein. The objective of this system is to raise the awareness of two audience groups, the general public and decision makers, about significant seismic risk in Iran. To address the general public, the system employs the notion of risk perception to put the results of sophisticated earthquake engineering risk analyses into perspective. The system also treats the epistemic uncertainty of user input due to the public's lack of technical knowledge through the notion of entropy in information theory....