Synthetic biology offers powerful remedies for some of the world's most intractable problems, but these solutions are clouded by uncertainty and risk that few strategies are available to address. The incentives for continued development of this emerging technology are prodigious and obvious, and the public deserves assurances that all potential downsides are duly considered and minimized accordingly. Incorporating social science analysis within the innovation process may impose constraints, but its simultaneous support in making the end products more acceptable to society at large should be considered a worthy trade-off. Contributing authors in this volume represent diverse perspectives related to synthetic biology's social sciences, and reflect on different areas of risk analysis and governance that have developed for the field. Such perspectives include leading scholarly discussion pertaining to risk assessment, governance, ethics, and communication. The chapters of this volume note that while the first twenty years of synthetic biology development have focused strongly on technological innovation and product development, the next twenty should emphasize the synergy between developers, policymakers, and publics to generate the most beneficial, well governed, and transparent technologies and products possible. Many chapters in this volume provide new data and approaches that demonstrate the feasibility for multi-stakeholder efforts involving policymakers, regulators, industrial developers, workers, experts, and societal representatives to share responsibilities in the production of effective and acceptable governance in the face of uncertain risk probabilities. A full consideration of such perspectives may prevent a world of draconian regulations based on an insufficient or incomplete understanding of the science that underpins synthetic biology, as well as any hesitancy or fear by the public to adopt its eventual products.

1 Reliability: Past, Present, Future.- 2 Reliability Analysis as a Tool for Expressing and Communicating Uncertainty.- 3 Modeling a Process of Non-Ideal Repair.- 4 Some Models and Mathematical Results for Reliability of Systems of Components.- 5 Algorithms of Stochastic Activity and Problems of Reliability.- 6 Some Shifted Stochastic Orders.- 7 Characterization of Distributions in Reliability.- 8 Asymptotic Analysis of Reliability for Switching Systems in Light and Heavy Traffic Conditions.- 9 Nonlinearly Perturbed Markov Chains and Large Deviations for Lifetime Functionals.- 10 Evolutionary Systems in an Asymptotic Split Phase Space.- 11 An Asymptotic Approach to Multistate Systems Reliability Evaluation.- 12 Computer Intensive Methods Based on Resampling in Analysis of Reliability and Survival Data.- 13 Statistical Analysis of Damage Processes.- 14 Data Analysis Based on Warranty Database.- 15 Failure Models Indexed by Time and Usage.- 16 A New Multiple Proof Loads Approach For Estimating Correlations.- 17 Conditional and Partial Correlation For Graphical Uncertainty Models.- 18 Semiparametric Methods of Time Scale Selection.- 19 Censored and Truncated Lifetime Data.- 20 Tests for a Family of Survival Models Based on Extremes.- 21 Software Reliability Models - Past, Present and Future.- 22 Dynamic Analysis of Failures in Repairable Systems and Software.- 23 Precedence Test and Maximal Precedence Test.- 24 Hierarchical Bayesian Inference in Related Reliability Experiments.- 25 Tests for Equality of Intensities of Failures of a Repairable System Under Two Competing Risks.- 26 Semiparametric Estimation in Accelerated Life Testing.- 27 A Theoretical Framework for Accelerated Testing.- 28 Unbiased Estimation in Reliability and Similar Problems.- 29 Prediction Under Association.- 30 Uniform Limit Laws for Kernel Density Estimators on Possibly Unbounded Intervals.- 31 A Weak Convergence Result Relevant in Recurrent and Renewal Models.

The origin of this book is the compelling evidence that a high proportion of machinery-related deaths and injuries are attributable to genuine and serious risks originating within machine design and construction. This trend continues despite significant legal obligations, notably the European regulatory regime giving effect to the Machinery Directive (among others), and a substantial body of specialist knowledge originating in the disciplines of human factors and safety engineering. Grounded in empirical research with machinery manufacturers, this book aims to elucidate the factors and processes shaping firms' performance for machinery safety, and considers their compatibility with legal obligations. Through a unique blending of rich empirical data coupled with safety, human factors, socio-legal and learning scholarship, the book provides both a nuanced account of firms' performance for machinery safety, and makes conceptual and theoretical contributions to understanding and explaining their performance. Specifically, the book elucidates the role of knowledge and motivational factors - and how these are constituted - in shaping firms' performance. It reveals the multiple state and non-state influences that create plural responses among manufacturing firms, which typically operate in supply chains and networks, and often globally. These insights provide the foundations to enhance regulatory design, and the book's conclusion recommends some innovative directions for regulatory interventions to sustain the safe design and construction of machinery.

The book is written for anyone who wants to design experiments, carry them out, and analyze the results. The authors provide a clear-cut, practical approach to designing experiments in any discipline and explain the general principles upon which such design is based. The reader then can apply these theories to any specific problem in his own work. No advanced mathematics is needed to utilize Design of Experiments - the necessary statistical concepts and briefly reviewed in the first two chapters. Subsequent chapters explain why and how the design of experiments in an intrinsic part of the scientific method, what problems will be encountered by the researcher in setting up his experiment and how to deal with them, and how to accurately analyze the result in terms of the sample taken and the method used. Each chapter includes problems encountered in specific fields so that the reader can test himself on his comprehension of the material. The diversity of the applications that these problems encompass also allows the reader to grasp the basic principles that unite the statistical approach to experiment design. Researchers and students in engineering, agriculture, pharmacy, veterinary science, chemistry, biology, the social; sciences, statistics, mathematics, or any other field that requires the design, solution, and analysis of problems will find this book absolutely indispensable.

This book discusses environmental management and construction management approaches to the environmental problems that can emerge in construction projects. It sets a brand new standard for environmental management in mega construction projects in China and helps all construction project stakeholders establish a more compliant and efficient environmental management system. The authors systematically explore management systems and team management, offering managerial methods and tips based on international and Chinese practices. Outlining all the environmental challenges that can arise during construction, it is a valuable resource for company owners, construction contractors, and construction management consultants and companies. It also offers useful insights for engineers, project managers and project executives.

The book contains solutions to fundamental problems which arise due to the logic of development of specific branches of science, which are related to pipeline safety, but mainly are subordinate to the needs of pipeline transportation. The book deploys important but not yet solved aspects of reliability and safety assurance of pipeline systems, which are vital aspects not only for the oil and gas industry and, in general, fuel and energy industries , but also to virtually all contemporary industries and technologies. The volume will be useful to specialists and experts in the field of diagnostics/ inspection, monitoring, reliability and safety of critical infrastructures. First and foremost, it will be useful to the decision making persons -operators of different types of pipelines, pipeline diagnostics/inspection vendors, and designers of in-line -inspection (ILI) tools, industrial and ecological safety specialists, as well as to researchers and graduate students.

This book provides a step-by-step guidance on how to implement analytical methods in project risk management. The text focuses on engineering design and construction projects and as such is suitable for graduate students in engineering, construction, or project management, as well as practitioners aiming to develop, improve, and/or simplify corporate project management processes. The book places emphasis on building data-driven models for additive-incremental risks, where data can be collected on project sites, assembled from queries of corporate databases, and/or generated using procedures for eliciting experts' judgments. While the presented models are mathematically inspired, they are nothing beyond what an engineering graduate is expected to know: some algebra, a little calculus, a little statistics, and, especially, undergraduate-level understanding of the probability theory. The book is organized in three parts and fourteen chapters. In Part I the authors provide the general introduction to risk and uncertainty analysis applied to engineering construction projects. The basic formulations and the methods for risk assessment used during project planning phase are discussed in Part II, while in Part III the authors present the methods for monitoring and (re)assessment of risks during project execution.

1) Enables engineers to meet international standards such as ISO 55 000. 2) Includes statistics essential to basic understanding of reliability engineering theory 3) Covers both high and low budget plants, alongside describing how to retrofit older plants and how to set up new plants 4) Includes a chapter on root cause analysis

This book introduces state-of-the-art models and methods based on the neuroendocrine-immune-inspired approaches in the field of manufacturing control systems. It develops various bio-inspired intelligent approaches for multiple applications in order to efficiently generate production plans and control solutions and agilely deal with the frequent unexpected disturbances at the shop floor level. It also provides an introduction to bio-inspired manufacturing systems with intelligent control structures and the latest technologies. Further, the book describes recent advances in the bio-inspired methodology for a high-level adaptability in manufacturing systems, including the bio-inspired control architecture and the implementation of intelligent and adaptive control approaches based on neuroendocrine-immune mechanisms and hormone-regulation principles. It offers a valuable resource for graduate students, researchers and engineers in the fields of production management, manufacturing system control and related areas.

Since the German edition of this book, the topic of risk has experienced even greater attention, not only in the world of science but also in other fields, such as economics and politics. Therefore, many new publications have evolved. To keep with the idea of an encyclopedia for the topic of risk, this book has been completely reworked. Not only are many updated examples included in chapter "Risks and disasters" but also new chapters have been introduced, such as the chapter "Indetermination and risk." This new chapter was developed since the question "Is it possible for risks to be completely eliminated, and if not why?" has become a major point of c- cern. Therefore, especially in this chapter, the focus of the book has - tended from a simple mathematical or engineering point of view to include much broader concepts. Here, not only aspects of system theory have to be considered, but also some general philosophical questions start to inf- ence the considerations of the topic of risk. The main goal of this edition, however, is not only the extension and revision of the book, but also the translation into the English language to allow more readers access to the ideas of the book. The author deeply hopes that the success the book made in the German edition continues and that readers experience a major gain from reading the book.

Reliability and Maintenance: Networks and Systems gives an up-to-date presentation of system and network reliability analysis as well as maintenance planning with a focus on applicable models. Balancing theory and practice, it presents state-of-the-art research in key areas of reliability and maintenance theory and includes numerous examples and exercises. Every chapter starts with theoretical foundations and basic models and leads to more sophisticated models and ongoing research.

The first part of the book introduces structural reliability theory for binary coherent systems. Within the framework of these systems, the second part covers network reliability analysis. The third part presents simply structured maintenance policies that may help with the cost-optimal scheduling of preventive maintenance. Each part can be read independently of one another.

Suitable for researchers, practitioners, and graduate students in engineering, operations research, computer science, and applied mathematics, this book offers a thorough guide to the mathematical modeling of reliability and maintenance. It supplies the necessary theoretical and practical details for readers to perform reliability analyses and apply maintenance policies in their organizations.

For almost every sensationalized media report of product failure, a closer look often determines these failures occurred due to inadequate reliability theory and methodology. Current theories and practices cannot solve these problems, mainly because test specifications, especially lifetime tests, express their results as either pass or fail; these results thus provide little useful quantitative information. In a clear, concise presentation, Improving Reliability and Quality for Product Success discusses how to eradicate failures in hardware products and, consequently, achieve greater success in the marketplace.

Evolved from the author s more than thirty years of experience, the book redefines quality and reliability terminology, explains failure mechanics, and analyzes why reliability accidents occur in the products of established corporations. The author presents a new prevention methodology in easily understood qualitative and scientific terms. Without excess discussions of the complex related mathematics, he creates principles that enable readers to identify problems before product release into the market. These novel concepts and methodology can reduce product troubles by establishing test specifications that produce quantified outcomes that constitute conclusive judgment data.

Many books that cover reliability theory/engineering/practice are geared towards professionals with advanced mathematical skills and would not necessarily be of use to executives and CEOs, who may not be quality or reliability experts but need to understand these principles when making decisions. This book addresses this important but neglected audience, introducing novel ideas based on back-to basics quality/reliability concepts in an easily understood manner. In addition, it explains basic, fresh new methods for maximizing customer satisfaction and securing a competitive edge in performance.

This book presents models and statistical methods for the analysis of recurrent event data. The authors provide broad, detailed coverage of the major approaches to analysis, while emphasizing the modeling assumptions that they are based on. More general intensity-based models are also considered, as well as simpler models that focus on rate or mean functions. Parametric, nonparametric and semiparametric methodologies are all covered, with procedures for estimation, testing and model checking.

Today, digital technologies represent an absolute must when it comes to creating new products and factories. However, day-to-day product development and manufacturing engineering operations have still only unlocked roughly fifty percent of the "digital potential". The question is why? This book provides compelling answers and remedies to that question. Its goal is to identify the main strengths and weaknesses of today's set-up for digital engineering working solutions, and to outline important trends and developments for the future. The book concentrates on explaining the critical basics of the individual technologies, before going into deeper analysis of the virtual solution interdependencies and guidelines on how to best align them for productive deployment in industrial and collaborative networks. Moreover, it addresses the changes needed in both, technical and management skills, in order to avoid fundamental breakdowns in running information technologies for virtual product creation in the future.

"Normal Accidents" analyzes the social side of technological risk. Charles Perrow argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensuring safety--building in more warnings and safeguards--fails because systems complexity makes failures inevitable. He asserts that typical precautions, by adding to complexity, may help create new categories of accidents. (At Chernobyl, tests of a new safety system helped produce the meltdown and subsequent fire.) By recognizing two dimensions of risk--complex versus linear interactions, and tight versus loose coupling--this book provides a powerful framework for analyzing risks and the organizations that insist we run them.

The first edition fulfilled one reviewer's prediction that it "may mark the beginning of accident research." In the new afterword to this edition Perrow reviews the extensive work on the major accidents of the last fifteen years, including Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Challenger disaster. The new postscript probes what the author considers to be the "quintessential 'Normal Accident'" of our time: the Y2K computer problem.

In today's sophisticated world, reliability stands as the ultimate arbiter of quality. An understanding of reliability and the ultimate compromise of failure is essential for determining the value of most modern products and absolutely critical to others, large or small. Whether lives are dependent on the performance of a heat shield or a chip in a lab, random failure is never an acceptable outcome.
Written for practicing engineers, Practical Reliability Engineering and Analysis for System Design and Life-Cycle Sustainment departs from the mainstream approach for time to failure-based reliability engineering and analysis. The book employs a far more analytical approach than those textbooks that rely on exponential probability distribution to characterize failure. Instead, the author, who has been a reliability engineer since 1970, focuses on those probability distributions that more accurately describe the true behavior of failure. He emphasizes failure that results from wear, while considering systems, the individual components within those systems, and the environmental forces exerted on them.

Dependable Products Are No Accident: A Clear Path to the Creation of Consistently Reliable Products
Taking a step-by-step approach that is augmented with current tables to configure wear, load, distribution, and other essential factors, this book explores design elements required for reliability and dependable systems integration and sustainment. It then discusses failure mechanisms, modes, and effects?as well as operator awareness and participation?and also delves into reliability failure modeling based on time-to-failure data considering a variety of approaches.
From there, the text demonstrates and then considers the advantages and disadvantages for the stress-strength analysis approach, including various phases of test simulation. Taking the practical approach still further, the author covers reliability-centered failure analysis, as well as condition-based and time-directed maintenance.
As a science, reliability was once considered the plaything of statisticians reporting on time-to-failure measurements, but in the hands of a practicing engineer, reliability is much more than the measure of an outcome; it is something to be achieved, something to quite purposely build into a system. Reliability analysis of mechanical design for structures and dynamic components demands a thorough field-seasoned approach that first looks to understand why a part fails, then learns how to fix it, and finally learns how to prevent its failing. Ultimately, reliability of mechanical design is based on the relationship between stress and strength over time. This book blends the common sense of lessons learned with mechanical engineering design and systems integration, with an eye toward sustainment. This is the stuff that enables organizations to achieve products valued for their world-class reliability.

The objective of this book is to better understand why components fail, addressing the needs of engineers who will apply reliability principles in design, manufacture, testing, and field service. It so contributes to new approaches and the development of electronic and telecommunications component reliability. As a reference source, it summarizes the knowledge on failure modes, degradation and mechanisms, including a survey of accelerated testing, achieving better reliability, total quality topics, screening tests and prediction methods. A detailed index, a glossary, acronym lists, reliability dictionaries and a rich specific bibliography round the benefit offered by the book. The technical level suites to senior and graduate students, as well as to experts and managers in industries.

Recent advances in science and technology have made modern computing and engineering systems more powerful and sophisticated than ever. The increasing complexity and scale imply that system reliability problems not only continue to be a challenge but also require more efficient models and solutions. This is the first book systematically covering the state-of-the-art binary decision diagrams and their extended models, which can provide efficient and exact solutions to reliability analysis of large and complex systems. The book provides both basic concepts and detailed algorithms for modelling and evaluating reliability of a wide range of complex systems, such as multi-state systems, phased-mission systems, fault-tolerant systems with imperfect fault coverage, systems with common-cause failures, systems with disjoint failures, and systems with functional dependent failures. These types of systems abound in safety-critical or mission-critical applications such as aerospace, circuits, power systems, medical systems, telecommunication systems, transmission systems, traffic light systems, data storage systems, and etc. The book provides both small-scale illustrative examples and large-scale benchmark examples to demonstrate broad applications and advantages of different decision diagrams based methods for complex system reliability analysis. Other measures including component importance and failure frequency are also covered. A rich set of references is cited in the book, providing helpful resources for readers to pursue further research and study of the topics. The target audience of the book is reliability and safety engineers or researchers. The book can serve as a textbook on system reliability analysis. It can also serve as a tutorial and reference book on decision diagrams, multi-state systems, phased-mission systems, and imperfect fault coverage models.

Analyzing maintenance as an integrated system with objectives, strategies and processes that need to be planned, designed, engineered, and controlled using statistical and optimization techniques, the theme of this book is the strategic holistic system approach for maintenance. This approach enables maintenance decision makers to view maintenance as a provider of a competitive edge not a necessary evil. Encompassing maintenance systems; maintenance strategic and capacity planning, planned and preventive maintenance, work measurements and standards, material (spares) control, maintenance operations and control, planning and scheduling, maintenance quality, training, and others, this book gives readers an understanding of the relevant methodology and how to apply it to real-world problems in industry. Each chapter includes a number exercises and is suitable as a textbook or a reference for a professionals and practitioners whilst being of interest to industrial engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and industrial management students. It can also be used as a textbook for short courses on maintenance in industry. This text is the second edition of the book, which has four new chapters added and three chapters are revised substantially to reflect development in maintenance since the publication of the first edition. The new chapters cover reliability centered maintenance, total productive maintenance, e-maintenance and maintenance performance, productivity and continuous improvement.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book summarizes work being pursued in the context of the CIPRNet (Critical Infrastructure Preparedness and Resilience Research Network) research project, co-funded by the European Union under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The project is intended to provide concrete and on-going support to the Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) research communities, enhancing their preparedness for CI-related emergencies, while also providing expertise and technologies for other stakeholders to promote their understanding and mitigation of the consequences of CI disruptions, leading to enhanced resilience. The book collects the tutorial material developed by the authors for several courses on the modelling, simulation and analysis of CIs, representing extensive and integrated CIP expertise. It will help CI stakeholders, CI operators and civil protection authorities understand the complex system of CIs, and help them adapt to these changes and threats in order to be as prepared as possible for mitigating emergencies and crises affecting or arising from CIs.

The measurement of dependability attributes on real systems is a very time-consuming and costly affair, making analytical or simulation modeling the only viable solutions. Dependability of Networked Computer-based Systems explores reliability, availability and safety modeling of networked computer-based systems used in life-critical applications such as avionics, nuclear power plants, automobiles and chemical process industries. Dependability of Networked Computer-based Systems gives an overview of basic dependability modeling concepts and addresses new challenges in dependability modeling of networked computer-based systems, as well as new trends, their capabilities and limitations. It covers a variety of dependability modeling methods: stochastic processes, Markov and semi-Markov models, response-time distribution, stochastic Petri-net-based modeling formalisms, and Monte Carlo simulation models. Dependability of Networked Computer-based Systems provides students and researchers with a detailed overview of dependability models and analysis techniques. Practicing engineers will also find this text a useful guide to decision-making based on system dependability at the design, operation and maintenance stages.

"Designing for Network and Service Continuity in Wireless Mesh Networks" describes performance predictability of the new wireless mesh network paradigm, and describes considerations in designing networks from the perspective of survivability and service continuity metrics. The work provides design insights for network design researchers and industry professionals. It includes designs for new mesh networks and extensions of existing networks with predictable performance.

This book explores a number of important issues in the area of occupational safety and hygiene. Presenting both research and best practices for the evaluation of occupational risk, safety and health in various types of industry, it particularly focuses on occupational safety in automated environments, innovative management systems and occupational safety in a global context. The different chapters examine the perspectives of all those involved, such as managers, workers and OSH professionals. Based on selected contributions presented at the 15th International Symposium on Occupational Safety and Hygiene (SHO 2019), held on 15-16 April, 2019, in Guimaraes, Portugal, the book serves as a timely reference guide and source of inspiration to OSH researchers, practitioners and organizations operating in a global context.

The future of regulation for integrated risk assessments and core applications are the main theme in a book which gives important insights into the trends that have developed within chemical, process and nuclear plants.

This book raises the level of understanding of thermal design criteria. It provides the design team with sufficient knowledge to help them evaluate device architecture trade-offs and the effects of operating temperatures. The author provides readers a sound scientific basis for system operation at realistic steady state temperatures without reliability penalties. Higher temperature performance than is commonly recommended is shown to be cost effective in production for life cycle costs.

The microelectronic package considered in the book is assumed to consist of a semiconductor device with first-level interconnects that may be wirebonds, flip-chip, or tape automated bonds; die attach; substrate; substrate attach; case; lid; lid seal; and lead seal. The temperature effects on electrical parameters of both bipolar and MOSFET devices are discussed, and models quantifying the temperature effects on package elements are identified. Temperature-related models have been used to derive derating criteria for determining the maximum and minimum allowable temperature stresses for a given microelectronic package architecture.

The first chapter outlines problems with some of the current modeling strategies. The next two chapters present microelectronic device failure mechanisms in terms of their dependence on steady state temperature, temperature cycle, temperature gradient, and rate of change of temperature at the chip and package level. Physics-of-failure based models used to characterize these failure mechanisms are identified and the variabilities in temperature dependence of each of the failure mechanisms are characterized. Chapters 4 and 5 describe the effects of temperature on the performance characteristics of MOS and bipolar devices. Chapter 6 discusses using high-temperature stress screens, including burn-in, for high-reliability applications. The burn-in conditions used by some manufacturers are examined and a physics-of-failure approach is described. The final chapter overviews existing guidelines for thermal derating of microelectronic devices, which presently involve lowering the junction temperature. The reader then learns how to use physics-of-failure models presented in the previous chapters for various failure processes, to evaluate the sensitivity of device life to variations in manufacturing defects, device architecture, temperature, and non-temperature stresses.