Safety is a paradoxical system property. It remains immaterial, intangible and invisible until a failure, an accident or a catastrophy occurs and, too late, reveals its absence. And yet, a system cannot be relied upon unless its safety can be explained, demonstrated and certified. The practical and difficult questions which motivate this study concern the evidence and the arguments needed to justify the safety of a computer based system, or more generally its dependability. Dependability is a broad concept integrating properties such as safety, reliability, availability, maintainability and other related characteristics of the behaviour of a system in operation. How can we give the users the assurance that the system enjoys the required dependability? How should evidence be presented to certification bodies or regulatory authorities? What best practices should be applied? How should we decide whether there is enough evidence to justify the release of the system? To help answer these daunting questions, a method and a framework are proposed for the justification of the dependability of a computer-based system. The approach specifically aims at dealing with the difficulties raised by the validation of software. Hence, it should be of wide applicability despite being mainly based on the experience of assessing Nuclear Power Plant instrumentation and control systems important to safety. To be viable, a method must rest on a sound theoretical background.

Offshore Risk Assessment is the first book to deal with quantified risk assessment (QRA) as applied specifically to offshore installations and operations. Risk assessment techniques have been used for some years in the offshore oil and gas industry, and their use is set to expand increasingly as the industry moves into new areas and faces new challenges in older regions. The book starts with a thorough discussion of risk analysis methodology. Subsequent chapters are devoted to analytical approaches to escalation, escape, evacuation and rescue analysis of safety and emergency systems. Separate chapters analyze the main hazards of offshore structures: Fire, explosion, collision and falling objects. Risk mitigation and control are then discussed, followed by an outline of an alternative approach to risk modelling that focuses especially on the risk of short-duration activities. Not only does the book describe the state of the art of QRA, it also identifies weaknesses and areas that need development. Readership: Besides being a comprehensive reference for academics and students of marine/offshore risk assessment and management, the book should also be owned by professionals in the industry, contractors, suppliers, consultants and regulatory authorities.

Non destructive testing aimed at monitoring, structural identification and di- nostics is of strategic importance in many branches of civil and mechanical - gineering. This type of tests is widely practiced and directly affects topical issues regarding the design of new buildings and the repair and monitoring of existing ones. The load bearing capacity of a structure can now be evaluated using well established mechanical modelling methods aided by computing facilities of great capability. However, to ensure reliable results, models must be calibrated with - curate information on the characteristics of materials and structural components. To this end, non destructive techniques are a useful tool from several points of view. Particularly, by measuring structural response, they provide guidance on the validation of structural descriptions or of the mathematical models of material behaviour. Diagnostic engineering is a crucial area for the application of non destructive testing methods. Repeated tests over time can indicate the emergence of p- sible damage occurring during the structure's lifetime and provide quantitative estimates of the level of residual safety.

Safety in industrial process and production plants is a concern of rising importance but because the control devices which are now exploited to improve the performance of industrial processes include both sophisticated digital system design techniques and complex hardware, there is a higher probability of failure. Control systems must include automatic supervision of closed-loop operation to detect and isolate malfunctions quickly. A promising method for solving this problem is "analytical redundancy", in which residual signals are obtained and an accurate model of the system mimics real process behaviour. If a fault occurs, the residual signal is used to diagnose and isolate the malfunction. This book focuses on model identification oriented to the analytical approach of fault diagnosis and identification covering: choice of model structure; parameter identification; residual generation; and fault diagnosis and isolation. Sample case studies are used to demonstrate the application of these techniques.

In the paper the author attempts to assess the fatigue life of chosen welded joints. It focuses especially on chosen problems that accompany deter- nation of the fatigue life of welded joints, taking into consideration the strain energy density parameter. Chapter 2 describes the welded joint as a stress concentrator. The state of stress and strain in the notch are described and theoretical and fatigue coefficients are indicated. The fatigue coef- cient of the notch effect is estimated on the basis of fictitious radius in the notch root. Chapter 3 presents a model of fatigue life assessment under uniaxial stress state with statistical handling of data presented. The new energy model of fatigue life assessment, which rests upon the analysis of stress and strain in the critical plane, is described in detail in chapter 4. The principle of such a description is presented in the uniaxial as well as in - axial state of loading. Chapter 5 contains the analysis of tests of four ma- rials subjected to different loadings: cyclic, variable-amplitude with Ga- sian distribution, and variable amplitude with Gaussian distribution and overloading for symmetric and pulsating loading. The analysis is based on the determined fatigue characteristics for all the considered materials. Chapter 6 shows the application of the model in the fatigue life assessment in the complex state of loading (bending with torsion of flange-tube and tube-tube joints) based on fatigue research of steel and aluminum welded joints carried out in well-known German centres.

Solder joints are ubiquitous in electronic consumer products. The European Union has a directive to ban the use of Pb-based solders in these products on July 1st, 2006. There is an urgent need for an increase in the research and development of Pb-free solders in electronic manufacturing. For example, spontaneous Sn whisker growth and electromigration induced failure in solder joints are serious issues. These reliability issues are quite complicated due to the combined effect of electrical, mechanical, chemical, and thermal forces on solder joints. To improve solder joint reliability, the science of solder joint behavior under various driving forces must be understood. In this book, the advanced materials reliability issues related to copper-tin reaction and electromigration in solder joints are emphasized and methods to prevent these reliability problems are discussed.

It is a pleasure to introduce to the reader this new Marine Painting Manual. The previous edition, entitled Ship Painting Manual, was published in 1975. Since then a number of new technological developments have taken place. Also, standards with regard to safety, health and the environment have become more severe. These changes called for a thoroughly revised and updated Marine Painting Manual. I believe that the editor should be congratulated on having completed this task in such a commendable way. I hope that this new volume will find as enthusiastic a response among those concerned with maritime affairs as its predecessor did some fifteen years ago. Dr. Jan Raat Director Netherlands Foundation for the Co-ordination of Maritime Research INTRODUCTION The "Marine Painting Manual" sets out to provide clear guidelines for the effective protection of marine structures, ocean-going vessels and offshore platforms. Painting is a high cost procedure and is a crucial factor in determining the life and subsequent maintenance of steel structures in the marine environment. The book is a follow-up to the "Ship Painting Manual" published in 1975. It has been completely revised, partly rewritten and an additional chapter on offshore structures included. The present volume contains detailed and up-to-date information on all aspects of the preparation and painting for the protection of marine structures. The following chapters are included: 1. The protection of different parts of ships under construction. 2. The protection of different parts of offshore structures under construction. 3. Surface preparation.

This book presents model-based analysis and design methods for fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control. Architectural and structural models are used to analyse the propagation of the fault through the process, test fault detectability and reveal redundancies that can be used to ensure fault tolerance. Case studies demonstrate the methods presented.

The second edition includes new material on reconfigurable control, diagnosis of nonlinear systems, and remote diagnosis, plus new examples and updated bibliography.

The book is important because it reflects a trend, especially in microelectronics manufacture toward recyclability. Europe and Asia are moving towards legislation to ban the use of lead in solders and public demand in the US will likely have the same result. Producers of solders and manufacturers who use them will have to invent and employ suitable substitutes and A Guide to Lead-free Solders will show them how to do so.

This volumeaddressestheissueofuncertaintyincivilengineeringfromdesign toconstruction. Failures do occur in practice. Attributing them to a residual risk or a faulty execution of the projectdoesnotproperlycover the range of causes. A closer scrutiny of the design, the engineering model, the data, the soil-structure-interactionand the model assumptions is required. Usually, the uncertaintiesininitialandboundaryconditionsaswellasmaterialparameters are abundant. Current engineering practice often leaves these issues aside, despite the factthatnewscienti?c tools have been developed in the past decades that allow a rational description of uncertainties of all kinds, from model uncertainty to data uncertainty. It is the aim of this volume to have a critical look atcurrent engineering riskconcepts in order to raise awareness of uncertainty in numericalcom- tations, shortcomings of a strictly probabilistic safety concept, geotechnical models of failure mechanisms and their implications forconstruction mana- ment, execution, and the juristic questionas to who has to takeresponsibility. In addition, a number ofthe new procedures for modelling uncertaintyare- plained. Our central claim is that doubts and uncertainties must be openly - dressed in the design process. This contrasts certain tendencies in the en- neering community that, though incorporating uncertainties by one or the other way in the modelling process, claim to being able tocontrol the

The establishment of the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) was the direct result of widespread concern that the complexity and interdependence of health, environmental, and technological risks facing the world was making the development and implementation of adequate risk governance strategies ever more difficult. This volume details the IRGC developed and proposed framework for risk governance and covers how it was peer reviewed as well as tested

Since the introduction of system signatures in Francisco Samaniego 's 1985 paper, the properties of this technical concept have been examined, tested and proven in a wide variety of systems applications. Based on the practical and research success in building reliability into systems with system signatures, this is the first book treatment of the approach. Its purpose is to provide guidance on how reliability problems might be structured, modeled and solved.

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.

The International Section on Machine and System Safety was founded in 1975 to deal with questions on occupational risks in this ?eld at the inter- tional level. It is a member of the Special Commission on Prevention of the International Social Security Association (ISSA). The Special Commission is a body within ISSA that focuses on work-related risks. It has 11 inter- tional Sections as members. ISSA was founded in 1927 with its headquarters in Geneva. It is working worldwide in over 150 countries with nearly 370 member institutions from all ?elds of social security. TheSection on Machine and System Safety, when it was founded, had its focus on machine safety, particularly on the ma- facturing of safe machinery, on assisting developing countries to be able to buy safe used machinery, and on delivering clear operating instructions. Our members and partners are: * institutions for safety and health at work; * insurance companies dealing with work-related risks; * research institutions; and * various enterprises, e.g. manufacturers, importers and users of machines and systems/installations. We thus bring together the experiences of our members and partners. The role of the operators soon grew in importance, and their capability for ha- ling machinery became an important factor for the safety and success of enterprises. The growing importance and complexity of handling different man-machine-environment situations created new challenges and led to - larging the Section's tasks to machine and system safety.

working mechanisms and to develop the overall governance framework in which we operate. Catherine Geslain-Laneelle Executive Director European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) Parma, March 2008 Acknowledgements This book and the General Framework for the Precautionary and Inclusive Governance of Food Safety that it presents and critically discusses have grown out of research undertaken within one of the subprojects (work package 5) of the research project SAFE FOODS, 'Promoting Food Safety through a New Integrated Risk Analysis Approach for Foods'. The Integrated Project SAFE FOODS has been funded by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme (April 2004 to June 2008) and coordinated by Dr H.A. Kuiper and Dr H.J.P. Marvin of RIKILT-Institute of Food Safety at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands. Subproject 5 of SAFE FOODS has dealt with institutional aspects of food safety governance with a focus on ways (procedural and structural mec- nisms) to improve the implementation of precaution, participation and a politi- science interface, and has been coordinated by the editors of this book. The General Framework and this book have been a collaborative effort of subproject 5 in which all contributors to the first part of this book were involved. We have very much appreciated this exceptionally fruitful cooperation. It has always been both greatly intellectually inspiring (with many intensive, focused discussions) and very pleasant (highly cooperative and reliable)."

Each year billions of dollars are being spent to develop, manufacture, and operate transportation systems such as aircraft, ships, trains, and motor vehicles throughout the world. During their operation thousands of lives are lost annually due to various types accidents. Needless to say, approximately 70 to 90 percent of transportation crashes are the result of human error to a certain degree. Moreover, it may be added that human errors contribute significantly to most transportation crashes across all modes of transportation.

Human Reliability and Error in Transportation Systems is the first book to cover the subject of human reliability across all types of transportation system. The material will be accessible to readers with no previous knowledge in the field, and is supported with a full explanation of the necessary mathematical concepts together with numerous examples and test problems.

"Recent Advances in Reliability and Quality in Design" presents the latest theories and methods of reliability and quality, with emphasis on reliability and quality in design and modelling. Each chapter is written by active researchers and professionals with international reputations, providing material which bridges the gap between theory and practice to trigger new practices and research challenges.

Postgraduates, researchers, and practitioners in reliability engineering, maintenance engineering, quality engineering, operations research, industrial and systems engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, management, and statistics will find this book a state-of-the-art survey of reliability and quality in design and practices.

Aims to give to the reader the tools necessary to apply semi-Markov processes in real-life problems.

The book is self-contained and, starting from a low level of probability concepts, gradually brings the reader to a deep knowledge of semi-Markov processes.

Presents homogeneous and non-homogeneous semi-Markov processes, as well as Markov and semi-Markov rewards processes.

The concepts are fundamental for many applications, but they are not as thoroughly presented in other books on the subject as they are here.

This book provides a panoramic view of theory and applications of Ageing and Dependence in the use of mathematical methods in reliability and survival analysis. Ageing and dependence are important characteristics in reliability and survival analysis. They affect decisions with regard to maintenance, repair/replacement, price setting, warranties, medical studies, and other areas. Most of the works containing the topics covered here are theoretical in nature. However, this book offers applications, exercises, and examples. It serves as a reference for professors and researchers involved in reliability and survival analysis.

T. Ito, International Space University, Strasbourg Central Campus, 1 Rue Jean Dominique Cassini, Parc d'Innovation, 67400 lllkirch-Graffenstaden, France e-mail: ito@isu. isunet. edu M. J. Rycroft, CAESAR Consultancy, 35 Millington Road, Cambridge CB3 9HW, UK e-mail: Michael. J. Rycroft (R)ukgateway. net As Symposium Committee Chair for the 2003 International Space University (ISU) Symposium, and Editor of this Proceedings volume, respectively, we write this introduction. The success of previous ISU symposia suggests that the ISU has developed a unique and winning formula for a novel type of symposium. The characteristics of ISU symposia are that they: * Adopt a broad, and interdisciplinary, perspective * Address all aspects of the subject, ranging from policy, business, organisational, and legal issues to technical and scientific topics * Foster a constructive dialogue among very different sectors of the space community, and * Allow ample time for interactive discussions. The present Symposium is no exception. It considers the very timely topic of space-based systems for global positioning and navigation, ranging from the GPS system developed by the US military to the Russian GLONASS system, and on to the future European Galileo system. Other nations are planning regional augmentation systems.

At last a second edition of this hugely important text that reflects the progress and experience gained in the last decade and aims at providing background and training material for a new generation of risk assessors. The authors offer an introduction to risk assessment of chemicals as well as basic background information on sources, emissions, distribution and fate processes for the estimation of exposure of plant and animal species in the environment and humans exposed via the environment, consumer products, and at the workplace. The coverage describes the basic principles and methods of risk assessment within their legislative frameworks (EU, USA, Japan and Canada).

This book presents design guidelines and implementation approaches for enterprise safety management system as integrated within enterprise integrated systems. It shows new model-based safety management where process design automation is integrated with enterprise business functions and components. It proposes new system engineering approach addressed to new generation chemical industry. It will help both the undergraduate and professional readers to build basic knowledge about issues and problems of designing practical enterprise safety management system, while presenting in clear way, the system and information engineering practices to design enterprise integrated solution.

A world that is changing faster and faster forces companies to a continuous performance monitoring. Indicators give the impression to be the real engine of organizations or even the economy at large. But performance indicators are not simple observation tools. They can have a deep normative effect, which can modify organizational behaviour and influence key decisions. Companies are what they measure The selection of good performance indicators is not an easy process. This monograph focuses on the designing of a Performance Measurement System (PMS), knowing that magic rules to identify them do not exist. Some indicators seem right and easy to measure, but have subtle, counter-productive consequences. Other indicators are more difficult to measure, but focus the enterprise on those decisions and actions that are critical to success. This book suggests how to identify indicators that achieve a balance in these effects and enhance long-term profitability."

Richard Bellmann developed a theory of dynamic programming which is for many reasons still in the center of great interest. The authors present a new approach in the ?eld of the optimization and multi-objective control of time-discrete systems which is closely related to the work of Richard Bellmann. They develop their own concept and their extension to the optimization and multi-objective control of time-discrete systems as well as to dynamic networks and multilayered structures are very stimulating for further research. Di?erent perspectives of discrete control and optimal dynamic ?ow problems on networks are treated and characterized. Together with the algorithmic solutions a framework of multi-objective control problems is - rived. The conclusion with a real world example underlines the necessity and - portance of their theoretic framework. As they come back to the classical Bellmann concept of dynamic programming they stress and honor his basic concept without debase their own work. Multilayereddecisionprocessesaspartofthedesignandanalysisofcomplexsystems and networks will be essential in many ways and ?elds in the future.

Recent Advances in Maintenance and Infrastructure Management is a collection of papers highlighting the state of the art in maintenance of large structures and management of infrastructures. The papers selected in this book are written by international experts from academia and industry, and were presented during the past three International Conference on Maintenance Management (MM Conferences) held from 2005 to 2007 and organized by CNIM (Italian National Committee for Maintenance). The selected papers are categorized into four thematic areas: 1. reliability and maintenance; 2. mathematical modeling and metrics for maintenance; 3. maintenance management and organization, and; 4. facilities management and contracting. The papers cover topics ranging from embedded sensors for diagnostics of structures to organizational issues related to effective maintenance planning. Recent Advances in Maintenance and Infrastructure Management provides readers with a snapshot of the latest developments in the tools and techniques used to conduct maintenance of complex infrastructures and systems. The book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in academia and industry involved in planning and deployment of maintenance operations. Additionally, this can serve as a reference text for advanced courses in operations management, and structural health monitoring.