Institutionernas doktorandkurser

Course description
Risk assessment has become an increasingly important part of civil and environmental engineering. It has a wide range of applications, e.g. in transportation, remediation of contaminated land, protection of drinking water resources, ground stability, and tunneling. Risk assessment not only includes the estimation of risk levels, but also provides a basis for decisions regarding what are the most relevant actions to be taken to reduce and control risks. In some cases, risk assessment is also part of the regulatory framework and required as a basis for design, construction and performance of technical systems.

Risk assessment is an inherently complex and multi-dimensional concept, since it involves the combination of probability and consequence of unwanted events as well as the evaluation of risk with respect to risk tolerability and alternative actions to reduce and control risks. Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is a quantitative concept and thus involves quantification of probabilities and consequences. A major issue in PRA is the understanding of uncertainty and how it can be modeled mathematically using probability.

In this doctoral course we will:

• Present the basic concepts of PRA and uncertainty modeling.
• Present Bayesian and classical statistical inference methods.
• Apply probabilistic methods for modeling uncertainty.
• Apply logic tree models (fault trees, event trees, decision trees).
• Apply Monte Carlo simulation.
• Present methods for expert judgments.
• Work on project assignments.
• Present our findings at a seminar.

The course is a mixture of lectures from the course leaders, presentations of assigned sections of the course literature by the participants, and seminars on project assignments. The participants will also identify a task related to their current research and individually perform a probabilistic risk analysis on this task.

At the seminars, the participants will show how their projects are progressing. The seminars also provide an opportunity for students to ask questions and for the teachers to give feedback and to talk about topics related to the methods that students have selected for their projects. The course ends with a half-day seminar at which students are presenting their projects.

After successfully performing seminars and individual assignments the course will give 7,5 HEC (higher education credits).

The purpose is that after completing the course the participants should be able to: