This book surveys recent applications of inspection models, maintenance models and cumulative damage models, as well as discusses the policies involved with these models. It explains how a stochastic approach can be applied to systems using real-world examples. The book begins by introducing and summarizing standard inspection models. It dedicates chapters to random inspection models and general inspection models, before moving on to discuss inspection policies and checkpoint models. The book discusses inspection of reliability systems, such as missile maintenance systems, as well as Markov models of inspection. The book concludes with a summary of other inspection models, problems they face, and solutions to these problems. Each chapter utilizes examples to illustrate the various models, methods, and policies. This book is of interest to engineering students, researchers, and design and production engineers working in system manufacturing.

This book presents a compendium of selected game- and decision-theoretic models to achieve and assess the security of critical infrastructures. Given contemporary reports on security incidents of various kinds, we can see a paradigm shift to attacks of an increasingly heterogeneous nature, combining different techniques into what we know as an advanced persistent threat. Security precautions must match these diverse threat patterns in an equally diverse manner; in response, this book provides a wealth of techniques for protection and mitigation. Much traditional security research has a narrow focus on specific attack scenarios or applications, and strives to make an attack “practically impossible.” A more recent approach to security views it as a scenario in which the cost of an attack exceeds the potential reward. This does not rule out the possibility of an attack but minimizes its likelihood to the least possible risk. The book follows this economic definition of security, offering a management scientific view that seeks a balance between security investments and their resulting benefits. It focuses on optimization of resources in light of threats such as terrorism and advanced persistent threats. Drawing on the authors’ experience and inspired by real case studies, the book provides a systematic approach to critical infrastructure security and resilience. Presenting a mixture of theoretical work and practical success stories, the book is chiefly intended for students and practitioners seeking an introduction to game- and decision-theoretic techniques for security. The required mathematical concepts are self-contained, rigorously introduced, and illustrated by case studies. The book also provides software tools that help guide readers in the practical use of the scientific models and computational frameworks.

Infrastructure Asset Management with Power System Applications is about infrastructure asset management, which can be expressed as the combination of management, financial, economic, and engineering, applied to physical assets with the objective of providing the required level of service in the most cost-effective manner. It includes management of the whole lifecycle of a physical asset from design, construction, commission, operation, maintenance, modification, decommissioning, and disposal. It covers budget issues and focuses on asset management of an infrastructure for energy—i.e., the electric power system. Features Offers a comprehensive reference book providing definitions, terminology, and basic theories as well as a comprehensive set of examples from a wide range of applications for the electric power system and its components. Spans a wide range of applications for the electric power system area, including real data and pictures. Contains results from recently published research and application studies. Includes a wide range of application examples for the electric power systems area from hydro, nuclear, and wind, plus shows future trends. Contributes to the overall goals of developing a sustainable energy system by providing methods and tools for a resource efficient use of physical assets in the electric power system area.

This book contains extended versions of 34 carefully selected and reviewed papers presented at the Third International Conference on Mathematical Methods in Reliability, held in Trondheim, Norway in 2002. It provides a broad overview of current research activities in reliability theory and its applications. There are chapters on reliability modelling, network and system reliability, reliability optimization, survival analysis, degradation and maintenance modelling, and software reliability. The authors are all leading experts in the field.A particular feature of the book is a historical review by Professor Richard E Barlow, well known for his pioneering research on reliability. The list of authors also includes the plenary session speakers Odd O Aalen, Philip J Boland, Sallie A Keller-McNulty, and Nozer Singpurwalla.

This book provides a detailed introduction to maintenance policies and the current and future research in these fields, highlighting mathematical formulation and optimization techniques. It comprehensively describes the state of art in maintenance modelling and optimization for single- and multi-unit technical systems, and also investigates the problem of the estimation process of delay-time parameters and how this affects system performance. The book discusses delay-time modelling for multi-unit technical systems in various reliability structures, examining the optimum maintenance policies both analytically and practically, focusing on a delay-time modelling technique that has been employed by researchers in the field of maintenance engineering to model inspection intervals. It organizes the existing work into several fields, based mainly on the classification of single- and multi-unit models and assesses the applicability of the reviewed works and maintenance models. Lastly, it identifies potential future research directions and suggests research agendas. This book is a valuable resource for maintenance engineers, reliability specialists, and researchers, as it demonstrates the latest developments in maintenance, inspection and delay-time-based maintenance modelling issues. It is also of interest to graduate and senior undergraduate students, as it introduces current theory and practice in maintenance modelling issues, especially in the field of delay-time modelling.

Our knowledge to model, design, analyse, maintain, manage and predict the life-cycle performance of infrastructure systems is continually growing. However, the complexity of these systems continues to increase and an integrated approach is necessary to understand the effect of technological, environmental, economic, social, and political interactions on the life-cycle performance of engineering infrastructure. In order to accomplish this, methods have to be developed to systematically analyse structure and infrastructure systems, and models have to be formulated for evaluating and comparing the risks and benefits associated with various alternatives. Civil engineers must maximize the life-cycle benefits of these systems to serve the needs of our society by selecting the best balance of the safety, economy, resilience and sustainability requirements despite imperfect information and knowledge. Within the context of this book, the necessary concepts are introduced and illustrated with applications to civil and marine structures. This book is intended for an audience of researchers and practitioners world‐wide with a background in civil and marine engineering, as well as people working in infrastructure maintenance, management, cost and optimization analysis. The chapters originally published as articles in Structure and Infrastructure Engineering.