Call for papers: Robust Design – Coping with Hazards Risk and Uncertainty

A special issue of International Journal of Reliability and Safety

This Special Issue is focused on robust design in a broad sense in the context of hazards, risk and uncertainty. It is based on the 4th International Workshop on Reliable Engineering Computing (REC2010), held in Singapore, March 3-5, 2010, but submissions from outside this Workshop are also welcome. Particular emphasis is on a multi-disciplinary character to form a unique symbiosis of various engineering and associated disciplines within the kernel areas of engineering, computer science, sciences, and mathematics.

The issue of robustness has attracted increasing attention. Societal and industrial interest has grown from both a safety point of view and an economic point of view. The development is driven by a series of accidents with natural and manmade sources including inappropriate design, as well as by changing economic and environmental requirements and conditions including effects from climate change. Robust design has to ensure that our engineering systems can cope with all hazards, risk and uncertainty over their entire lifetime from the construction to the controlled demolition.

The potential for applications ranges over all engineering fields. The developments in Robust Design are characterized by a remarkable diversity and high complexity, which concerns

1. the definition of robustness,
2. the mathematical framework, and
3. the application field.
   

Included is the design of structures, systems, processes, operations, new materials and technologies, computational procedures, numerical models, hardware components, etc. The modeling of hazards, risk and uncertainty is frequently associated with subjective, rare and imprecise information. Appropriate mathematical models are required for the treatment of aleatory and epistemic uncertainty and for imprecision and indeterminacy. Proposals for solutions include well-developed and established traditional stochastic methods such as Reliability-Based Design and Performance-Based Design, as well as a variety of non-traditional methods based on Bayesian theory, interval analysis, fuzzy set theory, evidence theory, imprecise probabilities, p-box approach, fuzzy probability theory, etc. In this context it is aimed at reliable and efficient numerical models and methods for Robust Design and associated problems.

Topics include but are not limited to:

• Robust design, reliability-based design, performance-based design
• Risk analysis, hazard analysis, risk and hazard mitigation
• Management and processing of uncertainties

Contributions are invited with emphasis on both theory and applications.

Important Date
Manuscript submission: May 31, 2010