Analyzing Uncertainty in Civil Engineering

"This volume addresses the issue of uncertainty in civil engineering from design to construction. Failures do occur in practice. Attributing them to a residual system risk or a faulty execution of the project does not properly cover the range of causes. It is the aim of this volume to have a critical look at current engineering risk concepts in order to raise awareness of uncertainty in numerical computations, shortcomings of a strictly probabilistic safety concept, geotechnical models of failure mechanisms and their implications for construction management, execution, and the juristic question of responsibility. In addition, a number of the new procedures for modelling uncertainty are explained. The book is a result of a collaborate effort of mathematicians, engineers and construction managers who met regularly in a post graduate seminar at the University of Innsbruck during the past years.