T. Nilsen et al., UTILIZATION OF PRINCIPLES FROM STRUCTURAL RELIABILITY IN QUANTITATIVERISK ANALYSIS - EXAMPLE FROM AN OFFSHORE TRANSPORT PROBLEM, Reliability engineering & systems safety, 61(1-2), 1998, pp. 127-137
Citations number
7
Categorie Soggetti
Operatione Research & Management Science","Engineering, Industrial
The objective of this paper is to discuss the use of methods developed
for calculation of the reliability of structures as a general tool fo
r calculating probabilities within the context of quantitative risk an
alysis. By applying these methods the analyst is enabled to model the
system, the uncertainties and the parameter correlations separately an
d systematically. This is ensured by flexible event and system modelli
ng by logical combination of limit state functions and suitable uncert
ainty modelling by assigning marginal probability distributions and co
rrelation measures. These properties might enable the analyst to inclu
de more knowledge in the analysis, compared to models traditionally ap
plied in quantitative risk analysis. The subjectivistic theory of prob
ability, which consistently allows subjective considerations to be inc
luded in the analysis, is adopted and provides the framework for the d
iscussions. The paper concludes that methods of structural reliability
represent a useful tool for calculating probabilities in a great numb
er of situations in quantitative risk analysis. An example from an off
shore towing operation sketches how these methods can open for stochas
tic modelling more in line with the characteristics of the actual syst
em, compared to a typical event tree approach. (C) 1998 Elsevier Scien
ce Limited.