The First Conference on Engineering Probability in Flood Defense was orga nized by the Department of Mathematics and Informatics of the Delft U niver sity of Technology and the Department of Industrial Engineering and Opera tions Research of the University of California at Berkeley, and was held on June 1,2 1995 in Delft. Groups at Berkeley and Delft were both deeply engaged in modeling deterioration in civil structures, particularly flood defense structures. The plans for the conference were well under way when the dramatic floods in The Netherlands and California in the winter of 1994-1995 focused world attention on these problems. The design of civil engineering structures and systems is essentially an example of decision making under uncertainty. Although the decision making part of the process is generally acknowledged, the uncertainty in variables and param eters in the design problem is less frequently recognized. In many practical design procedures the uncertainty is concealed behind sharp probabilistic de sign targets like 'once in a thousand years' combined with a standardized use of safety factors. The choice of these probabilistic design targets, however, is based on an assessment of the uncertainty of the variable under consideration, and on its assessed importance. The value of the safety factor is governed by similar considerations. Standard practice is simply accu~ulated experience and engineering judgment. In light of the great number of civil engineering structures that function suc-. cessfully, one may say that this standard practice has proven itself broadly satisfactory.

A collection of papers presented at the PSAM 7 – ESREL ’04 conference in June 2004, reflecting a wide variety of disciplines, such as principles and theory of reliability and risk analysis, systems modelling and simulation, consequence assessment, human and organisational factors, structural reliability methods, software reliability and safety, insights and lessons from risk studies and management/decision making. This volume covers both well-established practices and open issues in these fields, identifying areas where maturity has been reached and those where more development is needed.

This new title in the well-established "Quantitative Network Biology" series includes innovative and existing methods for analyzing network data in such areas as network biology and chemoinformatics. With its easy-to-follow introduction to the theoretical background and application-oriented chapters, the book demonstrates that R is a powerful language for statistically analyzing networks and for solving such large-scale phenomena as network sampling and bootstrapping. Written by editors and authors with an excellent track record in the field, this is the ultimate reference for R in Network Analysis.

Engineering Asset Management discusses state-of-the-art trends and developments in the emerging field of engineering asset management as presented at the Fourth World Congress on Engineering Asset Management (WCEAM). It is an excellent reference for practitioners, researchers and students in the multidisciplinary field of asset management, covering such topics as asset condition monitoring and intelligent maintenance; asset data warehousing, data mining and fusion; asset performance and level-of-service models; design and life-cycle integrity of physical assets; deterioration and preservation models for assets; education and training in asset management; engineering standards in asset management; fault diagnosis and prognostics; financial analysis methods for physical assets; human dimensions in integrated asset management; information quality management; information systems and knowledge management; intelligent sensors and devices; maintenance strategies in asset management; optimisation decisions in asset management; risk management in asset management; strategic asset management; and sustainability in asset management.

This volume provides an introduction for flood risk management practitioners, up-to-date methods for analysis of uncertainty and its use in risk-based decision making. It addresses decision making for both short-term (real-time forecasting) and long-term (flood risk planning under change) situations. It aims primarily at technical practitioners involved in flood risk analysis and flood warning, including hydrologists, engineers, flood modelers, risk analysts and those involved in the design and operation of flood warning systems. Many experienced practitioners are now expected to modify their way of working to fit into the new philosophy of flood risk management. This volume helps them to undertake that task with appropriate attention to the surrounding uncertainties. The book will also interest and benefit researchers and graduate students hoping to improve their knowledge of modern uncertainty analysis.

The authors of this monograph have developed a large and important class of survival analysis models that generalize most of the existing models. In a unified, systematic presentation, this monograph fully details those models and explores areas of accelerated life testing usually only touched upon in the literature. Accelerated Life Models: