ENGINEERING ROLE IN FAILURE COST EVALUATION FOR BUILDINGS

Cost benefit analysis is a common tool for decision making on safety. The appropriate degree of safety in structural design can be discussed based on a simple formula for optimum reliability including parameter s such as coefficient of variation of lifetime maximum load, cost-up c onstant and normalized failure cost. In many cases, the degree of safe ty is determined as specified in codes or regulations. However, when a dditional information is available, such as owner's demands, engineers are responsible for providing quantitative values for various paramet ers, in particular for failure cost. This paper examines sources of fa ilure costs and relations between the engineer's role in structural sa fety and discusses failure costs. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.