Risk and reliability analysis is an area of growing importance in geotechnical engineering, where many variables have to be considered. Statistics, reliability modeling and engineering judgement are employed together to develop risk and decision analyses for civil engineering systems. The resulting engineering models are used to make probabilistic predictions, which are applied to geotechnical problems.
Reliability & Statistics in Geotechnical Engineering comprehensively covers the subject of risk and reliability in both practical and research terms
* Includes extensive use of case studies
* Presents topics not covered elsewhere--spatial variability and stochastic properties of geological materials
* No comparable texts available
Practicing engineers will find this an essential resource as will graduates in geotechnical engineering programmes.

A remarkable look at how the growth, technology, and politics of high-frequency trading have altered global financial markets In today's financial markets, trading floors on which brokers buy and sell shares face-to-face have increasingly been replaced by lightning-fast electronic systems that use algorithms to execute astounding volumes of transactions. Trading at the Speed of Light tells the story of this epic transformation. Donald MacKenzie shows how in the 1990s, in what were then the disreputable margins of the US financial system, a new approach to trading-automated high-frequency trading or HFT-began and then spread throughout the world. HFT has brought new efficiency to global trading, but has also created an unrelenting race for speed, leading to a systematic, subterranean battle among HFT algorithms. In HFT, time is measured in nanoseconds (billionths of a second), and in a nanosecond the fastest possible signal-light in a vacuum-can travel only thirty centimeters, or roughly a foot. That makes HFT exquisitely sensitive to the length and transmission capacity of the cables connecting computer servers to the exchanges' systems and to the location of the microwave towers that carry signals between computer datacenters. Drawing from more than 300 interviews with high-frequency traders, the people who supply them with technological and communication capabilities, exchange staff, regulators, and many others, MacKenzie reveals the extraordinary efforts expended to speed up every aspect of trading. He looks at how in some markets big banks have fought off the challenge from HFT firms, and how exchanges sometimes engineer technical systems to favor certain types of algorithms over others. Focusing on the material, political, and economic characteristics of high-frequency trading, Trading at the Speed of Light offers a unique glimpse into its influence on global finance and where it could lead us in the future.

This textbook presents key theoretical approaches to understanding issues of sustainability and environmental management, perfectly bridging the gap between engineering and environmental science. It begins with the fundamentals of environmental modelling and toxicology, which are then used to discuss qualitative and quantitative risk assessment methods, and environmental assessments of product design. It discusses how business and government can work towards sustainability, focusing on managerial and legal tools, before considering ethics and how decisions on environmental management can be made. Students will learn quantitative methods while also gaining an understanding of qualitative, legal, and ethical aspects of sustainability. Practical applications are included throughout, and there are study questions at the end of each chapter. PowerPoint slides and jpegs of all the figures in the book are provided online. This is the perfect textbook on environmental studies for engineering and applied science students.

A global catastrophic risk is one with the potential to wreak death and destruction on a global scale. In human history, wars and plagues have done so on more than one occasion, and misguided ideologies and totalitarian regimes have darkened an entire era or a region. Advances in technology are adding dangers of a new kind. It could happen again.
In Global Catastrophic Risks 25 leading experts look at the gravest risks facing humanity in the 21st century, including asteroid impacts, gamma-ray bursts, Earth-based natural catastrophes, nuclear war, terrorism, global warming, biological weapons, totalitarianism, advanced nanotechnology, general artificial intelligence, and social collapse. The book also addresses over-arching issues - policy responses and methods for predicting and managing catastrophes.
This is invaluable reading for anyone interested in the big issues of our time; for students focusing on science, society, technology, and public policy; and for academics, policy-makers, and professionals working in these acutely important fields.

Financial markets respond to information virtually instantaneously. Each new piece of information influences the prices of assets and their correlations with each other, and as the system rapidly changes, so too do correlation forecasts. This fast-evolving environment presents econometricians with the challenge of forecasting dynamic correlations, which are essential inputs to risk measurement, portfolio allocation, derivative pricing, and many other critical financial activities. In Anticipating Correlations, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Engle introduces an important new method for estimating correlations for large systems of assets: Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC).

Engle demonstrates the role of correlations in financial decision making, and addresses the economic underpinnings and theoretical properties of correlations and their relation to other measures of dependence. He compares DCC with other correlation estimators such as historical correlation, exponential smoothing, and multivariate GARCH, and he presents a range of important applications of DCC. Engle presents the asymmetric model and illustrates it using a multicountry equity and bond return model. He introduces the new FACTOR DCC model that blends factor models with the DCC to produce a model with the best features of both, and illustrates it using an array of U.S. large-cap equities. Engle shows how overinvestment in collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, lies at the heart of the subprime mortgage crisis--and how the correlation models in this book could have foreseen the risks. A technical chapter of econometric results also is included.

Based on the Econometric and Tinbergen Institutes Lectures, "Anticipating Correlations" puts powerful new forecasting tools into the hands of researchers, financial analysts, risk managers, derivative quants, and graduate students.

* How is science represented by the media?
* Who defines what counts as a risk, threat or hazard, and why?
* In what ways do media images of science shape public perceptions?
* What can cultural and media studies tell us about current scientific controversies?
Media, Risk and Science is an exciting exploration into an array of important issues, providing a much needed framework for understanding key debates on how the media represent science and risk. In a highly effective way, Stuart Allan weaves together insights from multiple strands of research across diverse disciplines. Among the themes he examines are: the role of science in science fiction, such as Star Trek; the problem of 'pseudo-science' in The X-Files; and how science is displayed in science museums. Science journalism receives particular attention, with the processes by which science is made 'newsworthy' unravelled for careful scrutiny. The book also includes individual chapters devoted to how the media portray environmental risks, HIV-AIDS, food scares (such as BSE or 'mad cow disease' and GM foods) and human cloning. The result is a highly topical text that will be invaluable for students and scholars in cultural and media studies, science studies, journalism, sociology and politics.

Forecasting the Environmental Fate and Effects of Chemicals is the first book to address specifically the issue of forecasting in environmental toxicology and chemistry from a methodological, regulatory and practical perspective.
It is becoming increasingly important for environmental toxicologists and chemists to be able to forecast the fate and effects of chemicals by using existing information to predict the future.
Providing a unique and timely opportunity for active researchers and students to obtain in a single volume the 'state of the art' in this expanding field, this text discusses how forecasts can be made by:

• using ecotoxicological endpoints at different levels of biological organisation
• measuring and modelling chemical fate in biotic and abiotic environments
• adopting difference quantitative frameworks

This book, based on the author's Clarendon Lectures in Finance, examines the empirical behavior of corporate default risk. A new and unified statistical methodology for default prediction, based on stochastic intensity modeling, is explained and implemented with data on U.S. public corporations since 1980. Special attention is given to the measurement of correlation of default risk across firms. The underlying work was developed in a series of collaborations over roughly the past decade with Sanjiv Das, Andreas Eckner, Guillaume Horel, Nikunj Kapadia, Leandro Saita, and Ke Wang. Where possible, the content based on methodology has been separated from the substantive empirical findings, in order to provide access to the latter for those less focused on the mathematical foundations.
A key finding is that corporate defaults are more clustered in time than would be suggested by their exposure to observable common or correlated risk factors. The methodology allows for hidden sources of default correlation, which are particularly important to include when estimating the likelihood that a portfolio of corporate loans will suffer large default losses. The data also reveal that a substantial amount of power for predicting the default of a corporation can be obtained from the firm's "distance to default," a volatility-adjusted measure of leverage that is the basis of the theoretical models of corporate debt pricing of Black, Scholes, and Merton. The findings are particularly relevant in the aftermath of the financial crisis, which revealed a lack of attention to the proper modelling of correlation of default risk across firms.

Rice is cultivated throughout the world under submerged conditions. The high water requirements and the heavy pesticide load used in rice paddies worldwide have resulted in contamination of associated surface water, such as streams, ditches, rivers and lakes. The uniform risk assessment approach which has been developed for other crops is not applicable to rice paddies, because of the specific conditions applied to rice cultivation.
Pesticide Risk Assessment in Rice Paddies: Theory and Practice fills the gap in information on this subject. Written by experts, this book summarizes the methods used for pesticide risk assessment in rice paddies, the limitations and problems encountered and future developments. It also examines the various agronomic, pesticide application and risk assessment approaches used in different rice cultivated zones in Asia, America and Europe and is an essential reference for those working in this area.
* The only up-to-date book dealing with pesticide risk assessment in the flooded conditions of rice paddies
* Offers guidelines on the use and application of existing modeling tools, specific for rice cultivation
* Presents the differences and similarities in rice cropping systems and how these relate to pesticide risk assessment

Stress Testing and Risk Integration in Banks provides a comprehensive view of the risk management activity by means of the stress testing process. An introduction to multivariate time series modeling paves the way to scenario analysis in order to assess a bank resilience against adverse macroeconomic conditions. Assets and liabilities are jointly studied to highlight the key issues that a risk manager needs to face. A multi-national bank prototype is used all over the book for diving into market, credit, and operational stress testing. Interest rate, liquidity and other major risks are also studied together with the former to outline how to implement a fully integrated risk management toolkit. Examples, business cases, and exercises worked in Matlab and R facilitate readers to develop their own models and methodologies.

This publication examines risks from flooding and earthquakes in the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) region. It assesses the protection gap and identifies ways of strengthening financing. CAREC member countries face growing levels of disaster risk without sufficient financial protection. Regional cooperation can help narrow the protection gap and increase the financing available for quick responses to disaster events. This publication explores the current approach to disaster risk finance in each CAREC member state to identify opportunities to strengthen financing arrangements. It aims to inform the design of a regional disaster risk transfer facility.

As there is a need for careful analysis in a world where threats are growing more complex and serious, you need the tools to ensure that sensible methods are employed and correlated directly to risk. Counter threats such as terrorism, fraud, natural disasters, and information theft with the Fourth Edition of "Risk Analysis and the Security Survey. "Broder and Tucker guide you throughanalysis toimplementationto provide you with the know-how to implement rigorous, accurate, and cost-effective security policies and designs. This book builds on the legacy of its predecessors by updating and covering new content. Understand the most fundamental theories surrounding risk control, design, and implementation by reviewing topics such as cost/benefit analysis, crime prediction, response planning, and business impact analysis--all updated to match today's current standards.

This book will show you how to develop and maintain current business contingency and disaster recovery plans to ensure your enterprises are able to sustain loss are able to recover, and protect your assets, be it your business, your information, or yourself, from threats.

*Offers powerful techniques for weighing and managing the risks that face your organization *Gives insights into universal principles that can be adapted to specific situations and threats *Covers topics needed by homeland security professionals as well as IT and physical security managers"

Manage, control, and optimize the cloud spend on AWS. Key Features * Learn best practices in implementing a Cloud FinOps discipline with AWS * Set up your organization for success by enabling people, process, and organization * Choose the right pricing model strategy to optimize usage of AWS resources Book Description Much like how DevOps is a combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that advocate a collaborative working relationship between development and IT operations, FinOps encourages the same collaboration between technology and finance teams. Organizations with a mature FinOps practice decentralize cost ownership to developer teams, and encourage cross-functional collaboration between business, finance, and technology enabling speed, innovation, and business growth. You'll learn how to structure your organization to form the right FinOps team including a Cloud Center of Excellence. You'll learn how to implement practical cost savings measures with AWS tools and processes to optimize cost in both the short- and long-term. By the end of this book, you'll have the basis to implement a successful Cloud FinOps practice for your organization to get the best value of the AWS cloud for your workloads. What you will learn * Use AWS services to monitor and govern your cost usage and spend. * Implement automation to streamline cost optimization operations. * Design the best architecture to fit your workload to optimize on data transfer. * Maximize efficiency with elasticity strategies to optimize on costs. * Leverage cost optimization levers to save on compute and storage costs. * Identify strategies to create and govern the right cost metrics to bring value to your organization. Who This Book Is For This book is for enterprise architects, cloud architects, CFOs, CTOs, product managers, finance managers, and FinOps practitioners looking to optimize their use of the cloud. This book reveals tools, strategies, and frameworks to minimize costs that will allow your business to realize sustainable financial benefits and to efficiently use cloud resources.

Since the mid-1990s risk management has undergone a dramatic expansion in its reach and significance, being transformed from an aspect of management control to become a benchmark of good governance for banks, hospitals, schools, charities and many other organizations. Numerous standards for risk management practice have been produced by a variety of transnational organizations. While these many designs and blueprints are accompanied by ideals of enterprise, value production, and good governance, it is argued that the rise of risk management has also coincided with an intensification of auditing and control processes. The legalization and bureacratization of organizational life has increased because risk management has created new demands for proof and evidence of action. In turn, these demands have generated new risks to reputation.
In short, this important book traces the rise of the managerial concept of risk and the different logics and values which underpin it, showing that it has much less to do with real dangers and opportunities than might be thought, and more to do with organizational accountability and legitimacy.