Non-destructive evaluation (NDE) methods have dominated most of the fields of applied research and technology over the last twenty years. These techniques provide information on the functional efficiency of materials and structures without causing any structural impact on the structure itself. Their use enables the monitoring of the structural integrity, the structural condition as well as the service in-duced degradation of materials and structures during their service life. In this respect, they address a vast field of applications ranging from the aerospace and automotive industry to civil engineering structures and material
quality control.

This volume comprises scientific papers presented during the Fifth Conference on Emerging Technologies in Non-Destructive Testing (Ioannina, Greece, 19 21 September 2011). A broad spectrum of related research was presented during the course of the conference, including optical, acoustic, thermal, electrical and electromagnetic methods together with imaging tomographic and signal processing techniques. Special attention was given to NDE for Civil Engineering Structures and for the first time in the conference series, a multiple session on NDE for the protection of cultural heritage was organized.

Emerging Technologies in Non-Destructive Testing V contains contributions by experts in this field from 22 different countries worldwide. Reflecting the stateof-the-art in Non-Destructive Evaluation, the book will prove to be a valuable companion to students, engineers and industrial partners who are active in the field of non-destructive evaluation and testing. This volume will also provide students and researchers with insight into the focal points of contemporary research efforts in the field of non-destructive evaluation.

Highly practical and useful for practitioners - cuts through a highly technical and complex subject in a useable and easy to follow way but without 'dumbing down'. Focuses on the facilitation of risk management, an area that is glossed over or simply ignored in other books on risk management. Brand new chapters on virtual facilitation and the role of group bias in the assessment of risk.

Global competition is forcing reliability and other professionals to work closely during the product design and manufacturing phase. Because of this collaboration, reliability, usability, and quality principles are being applied across many diverse sectors of the economy. This book offers the principles, methods, and procedures for these areas in one resource. This book brings together the areas of reliability, usability, and quality for those working in diverse areas to allow them to be exposed to activities that can help them perform their tasks more effectively. This is the only book that covers these areas together in this manner and written in such a way that no previous knowledge is required to understand it. The sources of the material presented are included in the reference section at the end of each chapter along with examples and solutions to test reader comprehension. Applied Reliability, Usability, and Quality for Engineers is useful to design, manufacturing, and systems engineers, as well as manufacturing managers, reliability, usability and, quality specialists. It can also be helpful to graduate, senior undergraduate students, and instructors.

One of the seventeen critical infrastructures vital to the security of the United States, the water supply system remains largely unprotected from the threat of terrorism, including possible revenge by Al Qaeda over the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Recognizing and identifying prospective events of terrorism against the water infrastructure is critical to the protection of the nation, as the consequences triggered by a terrorist attack on the water supply would be devastating. Risk Assessment for Water Infrastructure: Safety and Security provides a unique quantitative risk assessment methodology for protection and security against terrorist contamination, vandalism, attacks against dams, and other threats to water supply systems. Focusing on the human safety, environmental, and economic consequences triggered by potential terrorist attacks and other threats, the book presents: The development of an integrated approach of risk assessment based upon the cumulative prospect theory The qualitative/quantitative processes and models for security and safe facility operations as required by EPA, DHS, and other governmental and regulatory agencies The application of an integrated model to the risk assessment of surface water, dams, wells, wastewater treatment facilities, reservoirs, and aqueducts of large urban regions The development of intelligence analysis incorporating risk assessment for terrorism prevention Finally, the book presents the legal and regulatory requirements and policy related to the protection and security of water infrastructure from terrorism and natural hazards to both human health and the environment. By analyzing potential terrorist risks against the water supply, strategic improvements in U.S. water infrastructure security may be achieved, including changes in policy, incorporation of intrusion detection technology, increased surveillance, and increased intelligence. More information can be found on the author's website.

Across the world, organizations continue to be damaged and brought down by systemic non-compliance or the misdeeds of a few, and newspapers abound with examples of corporate and NGO scandals and crimes. This is despite the increasing ethical demands stakeholders are making of business, the exposing power of social media, the proliferating requirements of compliance laws and regulations, and the burgeoning numbers of policies, procedures and compliance officers that have been put in place in response. So why isn't compliance working? The Business Guide to Effective Compliance and Ethics examines how rules-based, tick-box, defensible compliance continues to fail, and lays out a new approach for organizations seeking to flourish and succeed. Written for any organization and businesses, this book provides clear, thorough and practical guidance for practitioners and decision-makers. It explains in layman's terms the skills, tools and mindset needed to develop and deliver a best practice compliance and ethics programme - one that meets the requirements made by law, stakeholders and society, and protects your organization from risk of fines, penalties and reputational damage. But this is also a book for all those interested in how to build employee engagement and motivation. The Business Guide to Effective Compliance and Ethics demonstrates the value - including competitive advantage, career satisfaction, employee and customer loyalty, and brand enhancement - that a truly effective compliance and ethics programme can bring, when it works hand in hand with a values-based culture of shared ownership.

Most approaches that contribute to the design of life-critical systems almost only consider nominal situations where procedures can be developed and used to achieve satisfactory operations. These kinds of approaches lead to rigid ways of doing things and poorly address the needs for flexibility, especially when things go wrong. It is not a matter of human adaptation but of human systems integration (HSI) flexibility. HSI flexibility requires cross-fertilization of appropriate experiences combined with creativity. This book provides risk-management approaches and methods for combining prevention and design. Features: Discusses risk-management approaches and methods for combining prevention and design Examines a transdisciplinary approach to risk management in design and operations of safer life-critical systems Proposes an approach of work analysis during design, which enables design teams to consider HSI issues early enough to fix organizational problems upstream Teaches the combination of prevention and design for safety management This book gathers and analyzes relevant field data to rationalize human and systems activity in various life-critical environments and workplaces, in a systemic manner, and in a variety of safety domains (e.g., aviation, road, navy, manufacturing, hospital, transportation, defense, sport). It further formalizes and analyzes risk-taking experience, expertise, stories about critical events, and scientific and professional literature data to help engineering designers, managers, and health and safety specialists. The text is primarily written for graduate students and professionals working in the fields of occupational health and safety, ergonomics, human factors, cognitive engineering, and human-system integration.

Large-Scale Evacuation introduces the reader to the steps involved in evacuation modelling for towns and cities, from understanding the hazards that can require large-scale evacuations, through understanding how local officials decide to issue evacuation advisories and households decide whether to comply, to transportation simulation and traffic management strategies. The author team has been recognized internationally for their research and consulting experience in the field of evacuations. Collectively, they have 125 years of experience in evacuation, including more than 140 projects for federal and state agencies. The text explains how to model evacuations that use the road transportation network by combining perspectives from social scientists and transportation engineers, fields that have commonly approached evacuation modelling from distinctly different perspectives. In doing so, it offers a step-by-step guide through the key questions needed to model an evacuation and its impacts to the evacuation route system as well as evacuation management strategies for influencing demand and expanding capacity. The authors also demonstrate how to simulate the resulting traffic and evacuation management strategies that can be used to facilitate evacuee movement and reduce unnecessary demand. Case studies, which identify key points to analyze in an evacuation plan, discuss evacuation termination and re-entry, and highlight challenges that someone developing an evacuation plan or model should expect, are also included. This textbook will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, and advanced students.

In today's world, deep learning source codes and a plethora of open access geospatial images are readily available and easily accessible. However, most people are missing the educational tools to make use of this resource. Deep Learning for Remote Sensing Images with Open Source Software is the first practical book to introduce deep learning techniques using free open source tools for processing real world remote sensing images. The approaches detailed in this book are generic and can be adapted to suit many different applications for remote sensing image processing, including landcover mapping, forestry, urban studies, disaster mapping, image restoration, etc. Written with practitioners and students in mind, this book helps link together the theory and practical use of existing tools and data to apply deep learning techniques on remote sensing images and data. Specific Features of this Book: The first book that explains how to apply deep learning techniques to public, free available data (Spot-7 and Sentinel-2 images, OpenStreetMap vector data), using open source software (QGIS, Orfeo ToolBox, TensorFlow) Presents approaches suited for real world images and data targeting large scale processing and GIS applications Introduces state of the art deep learning architecture families that can be applied to remote sensing world, mainly for landcover mapping, but also for generic approaches (e.g. image restoration) Suited for deep learning beginners and readers with some GIS knowledge. No coding knowledge is required to learn practical skills. Includes deep learning techniques through many step by step remote sensing data processing exercises.

A challenge to the conventional wisdom surrounding financial risk, providing insight into why easy solutions to control the financial system are doomed to fail Finance plays a key role in the prosperity of the modern world-but it also brings grave dangers. We seek to manage those threats with a vast array of sophisticated mathematical tools and techniques of financial risk management. Too often, though, we fail to address the greatest risk-the peril posed by our own behavior. Jon Danielsson argues that critical risk is generated from within, through the interactions of individuals and perpetuated by their beliefs, objectives, abilities, and prejudices. He asserts that the widespread belief that risk originates outside the financial system frustrates our ability to measure and manage it, and the likely consequences of new regulations will help alleviate small-scale risks but, perversely, encourage excessive risk taking. Danielsson uses lessons from past and recent crises to show that diversity is the best way to safeguard our financial system.

Enterprise Risk Management: Advances on its Foundation and Practice relates the fundamental enterprise risk management (ERM) concepts and current generic risk assessment and management principles that have been influential in redefining the risk field over the last decade. It defines ERM with a particular focus on understanding the nexus between risk, uncertainty, knowledge and performance. The book argues that there is critical need for ERM concepts, principles and methods to adapt to the latest and most influential risk management developments, as there are several issues with outdated ERM theories and practices; problems include the inability to effectively and systematically balance both opportunity and downside performance, or relying too much on narrow probability-based perspectives for risk assessment and decision-making. It expands traditional loss-based risk principles into new and innovative performance-risk frameworks, and presents fundamental risk principles that have recently been developed by the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA). All relevant statistical and risk concepts are clearly explained and interpreted using minimal mathematical notation. The focus of the book is centered around ideas and principles, more than technicalities. The book is primarily intended for risk professionals, researchers and graduate students in the fields of engineering and business, and should also be of interest to executive managers and policy makers with some background in quantitative methods such as statistics.

"Financial Risk Forecasting" is a complete introduction to practical quantitative risk management, with a focus on market risk. Derived from the authors teaching notes and years spent training practitioners in risk management techniques, it brings together the three key disciplines of finance, statistics and modeling (programming), to provide a thorough grounding in risk management techniques.

Written by renowned risk expert Jon Danielsson, the book begins with an introduction to financial markets and market prices, volatility clusters, fat tails and nonlinear dependence. It then goes on to present volatility forecasting with both univatiate and multivatiate methods, discussing the various methods used by industry, with a special focus on the GARCH family of models. The evaluation of the quality of forecasts is discussed in detail. Next, the main concepts in risk and models to forecast risk are discussed, especially volatility, value-at-risk and expected shortfall. The focus is both on risk in basic assets such as stocks and foreign exchange, but also calculations of risk in bonds and options, with analytical methods such as delta-normal VaR and duration-normal VaR and Monte Carlo simulation. The book then moves on to the evaluation of risk models with methods like backtesting, followed by a discussion on stress testing. The book concludes by focussing on the forecasting of risk in very large and uncommon events with extreme value theory and considering the underlying assumptions behind almost every risk model in practical use - that risk is exogenous - and what happens when those assumptions are violated.

Every method presented brings together theoretical discussion and derivation of key equations and a discussion of issues in practical implementation. Each method is implemented in both MATLAB and R, two of the most commonly used mathematical programming languages for risk forecasting with which the reader can implement the models illustrated in the book.

The book includes four appendices. The first introduces basic concepts in statistics and financial time series referred to throughout the book. The second and third introduce R and MATLAB, providing a discussion of the basic implementation of the software packages. And the final looks at the concept of maximum likelihood, especially issues in implementation and testing.

The book is accompanied by a website - www.financialriskforecasting.com - which features downloadable code as used in the book.

Enterprise Risk Management: Advances on its Foundation and Practice relates the fundamental enterprise risk management (ERM) concepts and current generic risk assessment and management principles that have been influential in redefining the risk field over the last decade. It defines ERM with a particular focus on understanding the nexus between risk, uncertainty, knowledge and performance. The book argues that there is critical need for ERM concepts, principles and methods to adapt to the latest and most influential risk management developments, as there are several issues with outdated ERM theories and practices; problems include the inability to effectively and systematically balance both opportunity and downside performance, or relying too much on narrow probability-based perspectives for risk assessment and decision-making. It expands traditional loss-based risk principles into new and innovative performance-risk frameworks, and presents fundamental risk principles that have recently been developed by the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA). All relevant statistical and risk concepts are clearly explained and interpreted using minimal mathematical notation. The focus of the book is centered around ideas and principles, more than technicalities. The book is primarily intended for risk professionals, researchers and graduate students in the fields of engineering and business, and should also be of interest to executive managers and policy makers with some background in quantitative methods such as statistics.

Given time, scientists reach consensus about the truth or falsity of a wide range of alleged hazards. Today, there is broad agreement that CFCs destroy stratospheric ozone. On the other hand, research does not support claims that electromagnetic fields from transmission lines cause a noticeable increase of leukemia. But new allegations continuously arise. Are manufactured chemicals in the environment distorting normal hormonal processes in our bodies? Are genetically modified foods a cause for concern? Addressing one of the most vexing problems in risk policy, Allan Mazur asks how we can tell, at an early stage, how seriously we should take a new warning. To identify hallmarks that could help predict the truth or falsity of an alleged hazard, Mazur analyzes 31 health warnings raised during the 1950s and 1960s about diverse technologies, including fluoridation, DDT, cyclamate, nuclear weapons testing, and birth control pills. Among his considerations are the initial source of an alarm, the biases held by its primary 'sponsors, ' and the type of media coverage it receives. With 30 to 50 years of hindsight, he identifies characteristics - apparent from the outset of a controversy - that most effectively distinguish true warnings from false alarms. Early recognition and a timely response to a genuine hazard are important to protect our environment, health, and economic well-being. But if we act quickly and a warning turns out to be false, money is wasted, people are needlessly frightened, regulators lose credibility, and our ability to appropriately handle the next set of risks is compromised. Mazur's findings do not provide certainty about which of today's warnings will prove true and which will prove false. But they do help us to make informed judgments about where it is best and most reasonable to direct our worries and resources.

This book provides a comprehensive demonstration of risk analysis as a distinct science covering risk understanding, assessment, perception, communication, management, governance and policy. It presents and discusses the key pillars of this science, and provides guidance on how to conduct high-quality risk analysis. The Science of Risk Analysis seeks to strengthen risk analysis as a field and science by summarizing and extending current work on the topic. It presents the foundation for a distinct risk field and science based on recent research, and explains the difference between applied risk analysis (to provide risk knowledge and tackle risk problems in relation to for example medicine, engineering, business or climate change) and generic risk analysis (on concepts, theories, frameworks, approaches, principles, methods and models to understand, assess, characterise, communicate, manage and govern risk). The book clarifies and describes key risk science concepts, and builds on recent foundational work conducted by the Society for Risk Analysis in order to provide new perspectives on science and risk analysis. The topics covered are accompanied by cases and examples relating to current issues throughout. This book is essential reading for risk analysis professionals, scientists, students and practitioners, and will also be of interest to scientists and practitioners from other fields who apply risk analysis in their work.

This book provides a comprehensive demonstration of risk analysis as a distinct science covering risk understanding, assessment, perception, communication, management, governance and policy. It presents and discusses the key pillars of this science, and provides guidance on how to conduct high-quality risk analysis. The Science of Risk Analysis seeks to strengthen risk analysis as a field and science by summarizing and extending current work on the topic. It presents the foundation for a distinct risk field and science based on recent research, and explains the difference between applied risk analysis (to provide risk knowledge and tackle risk problems in relation to for example medicine, engineering, business or climate change) and generic risk analysis (on concepts, theories, frameworks, approaches, principles, methods and models to understand, assess, characterise, communicate, manage and govern risk). The book clarifies and describes key risk science concepts, and builds on recent foundational work conducted by the Society for Risk Analysis in order to provide new perspectives on science and risk analysis. The topics covered are accompanied by cases and examples relating to current issues throughout. This book is essential reading for risk analysis professionals, scientists, students and practitioners, and will also be of interest to scientists and practitioners from other fields who apply risk analysis in their work.

'Brilliant and highly entertaining, this book is essential reading for every leader, regardless of age or experience.' - Admiral William McRaven, author of Make Your Bed -------- What if you could learn how to expect the unexpected? In business, like in life, foresight is crucial for avoiding pitfalls and disaster - and yet it's something we spend nearly no time developing. Retired four-star general Stan McChrystal has lived a life associated with the deadly risks of combat; he has been forced to analyse and prepare for situations he didn't even know were possible. As a business consultant, he has seen how hundreds of individuals and organizations - too often and to great cost - fail to mitigate risk. Why? Because they focus on the probability of something happening instead of the interface through which any and all risks can be managed. In Risk: A User's Guide, McChrystal presents a new system of responding to risk. He lays out ten dimensions of control which we can adjust at any given time, no matter the context: narrative, bias, action, timing, adaptability, communication, technology, diversity, structure and leadership. Drawing on compelling examples ranging from military history to the business world, and offering infinitely practical exercises to improve preparedness, McChrystal illustrates how these ten factors are almost always in effect - and how, by considering them constantly, individuals and organizations can exert mastery over every conceivable sort of risk that they might face. We may not be able to see into the future, but Risk gives us a framework for improving our resistance and building a strong defense against what we know -- and what we don't. -------- 'A brilliant user's guide that demonstrates how managing risk is about how we lead, rather than getting mathematical equations right.' - Annie Duke, bestselling author of Thinking In Bets and How To Decide 'Measured, meticulous, and filled with practical, pragmatic wisdom from both war and peace, McChrystal's clear-eyed, unsentimental guidance cuts to the heart of our precarious existence. A must-read leadership bible.' - James Kerr, bestselling author of Legacy 'An essential playbook on mastering all dimensions of risk. For soldiers, educators, CEOs, entrepreneurs, government leaders, and everyone in between.' - Keith Krach, former Undersecretary of State and CEO of DocuSign

Christian Hugo Hoffmann undermines the citadel of risk assessment and management, arguing that classical probability theory is not an adequate foundation for modeling systemic and extreme risk in complex financial systems. He proposes a new class of models which focus on the knowledge dimension by precisely describing market participants' own positions and their propensity to react to outside changes. The author closes his thesis by a synthetical reflection on methods and elaborates on the meaning of decision-making competency in a risk management context in banking. By choosing this poly-dimensional approach, the purpose of his work is to explore shortcomings of risk management approaches of financial institutions and to point out how they might be overcome.

Risk analysis is not a narrowly defined set of applications. Rather, it is widely used to assess and manage a plethora of hazards that threaten dire implications. However, too few people actually understand what risk analysis can help us accomplish and, even among experts, knowledge is often limited to one or two applications. Explaining Risk Analysis frames risk analysis as a holistic planning process aimed at making better risk-informed decisions and emphasizing the connections between the parts. This framework requires an understanding of basic terms, including explanations of why there is no universal agreement about what risk means, much less risk assessment, risk management and risk analysis. Drawing on a wide range of case studies, the book illustrates the ways in which risk analysis can help lead to better decisions in a variety of scenarios, including the destruction of chemical weapons, management of nuclear waste and the response to passenger rail threats. The book demonstrates how the risk analysis process and the data, models and processes used in risk analysis will clarify, rather than obfuscate, decision-makers' options. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of risk assessment, risk management, public health, environmental science, environmental economics and environmental psychology.

The role of designers has traditionally been to design a building so that it conforms to accepted local building codes. The safety of workers is left up to the contractor building the designs. Research shows, however, that designers can have an especially strong influence on construction safety during the concept, preliminary and detailed design phases. This book establishes the new knowledge and conceptual frameworks necessary to develop a mobile computing-enabled knowledge management system that can help reduce the high rate of construction falls. There are three main objectives of this book: 1. To create a new Prevention through Design (PtD) knowledge base to model the relationships between fall risks and design decisions; 2. To develop a PtD mobile App to assist building designers in fall prevention through design; 3. To evaluate the practical implications of the PtD mobile App for the construction industry, especially for building designers and workers. The cutting edge technologies explored in this book have the potential to significantly reduce the rate of serious injuries that occur in the global construction industry. This is essential reading for researchers and advanced students of construction management with an interest in safety or mobile technologies.

Assessing Command and Control Effectiveness: Dealing with a Changing World offers a description of the current state of Command and Control (C2) research in imperfect settings, showing how a research process should assess, analyse and communicate results to the development cycle of methods, work, manning and C2-technology. Special attention is given to the development of C2 research methods to meet the current and coming needs. The authors also look forward towards a future where effective assessment of C2 abilities are even more crucial, for instance in agile organisations. The purpose of the C2 research is to improve the process and make it more effective while still saving time and money. Research methods have to be chosen carefully to be effective and simple, yet provide results of high quality. The methodological concerns are a major consideration when working under such circumstances. Furthermore, there is often a need for a swift iterative development cycle, and thus a demand to quickly deliver results from the research process. This book explains how field research experimentation can be quick, simple and effective, being able to draw valid conclusions even when sample sizes are small and resources are limited, collecting empirical data using measures and procedures that are minimally intrusive.

Actuaries have access to a wealth of individual data in pension and insurance portfolios, but rarely use its full potential. This book will pave the way, from methods using aggregate counts to modern developments in survival analysis. Based on the fundamental concept of the hazard rate, Part I shows how and why to build statistical models, based on data at the level of the individual persons in a pension scheme or life insurance portfolio. Extensive use is made of the R statistics package. Smooth models, including regression and spline models in one and two dimensions, are covered in depth in Part II. Finally, Part III uses multiple-state models to extend survival models beyond the simple life/death setting, and includes a brief introduction to the modern counting process approach. Practising actuaries will find this book indispensable, and students will find it helpful when preparing for their professional examinations.

Environmental Enforcement Authorities (EEAs), sometimes called Environmental Protection Agencies (EPAs), are the regulatory, monitoring and enforcement agencies of national, state/provincial and local governments worldwide responsible for implementing, monitoring and enforcing environmental legislation. This one-of-a-kind, authoritative handbook offers a comprehensive assessment of the principles and best practice of EEAs throughout the world with a focus on Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, east and south-east Asia and various other OECD, transition and developing countries.The book assesses structures, expertise and capacity, financing, permitting, monitoring, inspection, enforcement and EEA performance and future directions. It also identifies best practice for creating or improving EEAs. It offers substantial information for industry on the nature of compliance with environmental regulations as well as vital information for professionals, consultants, NGOs and researchers working at the interface between government EEAs and industry.