Stochastic Orders in Reliability and Risk Management is composed of 19 contributions on the theory of stochastic orders, stochastic comparison of order statistics, stochastic orders in reliability and risk analysis, and applications. These review/exploratory chapters present recent and current research on stochastic orders reported at the International Workshop on Stochastic Orders in Reliability and Risk Management, or SORR2011, which took place in the City Hotel, Xiamen, China, from June 27 to June 29, 2011. The conference’s talks and invited contributions also represent the celebration of Professor Moshe Shaked, who has made comprehensive, fundamental contributions to the theory of stochastic orders and its applications in reliability, queueing modeling, operations research, economics and risk analysis. This volume is in honor of Professor Moshe Shaked. The work presented in this volume represents active research on stochastic orders and multivariate dependence, and exemplifies close collaborations between scholars working in different fields. The Xiamen Workshop and this volume seek to revive the community workshop tradition on stochastic orders and dependence and strengthen research collaboration, while honoring the work of a distinguished scholar.

An Introduction to Stochastic Orders discusses this powerful tool that can be used in comparing probabilistic models in different areas such as reliability, survival analysis, risks, finance, and economics. The book provides a general background on this topic for students and researchers who want to use it as a tool for their research. In addition, users will find detailed proofs of the main results and applications to several probabilistic models of interest in several fields, and discussions of fundamental properties of several stochastic orders, in the univariate and multivariate cases, along with applications to probabilistic models. - Introduces stochastic orders and its notation - Discusses different orders of univariate stochastic orders - Explains multivariate stochastic orders and their convex, likelihood ratio, and dispersive orders

Stochastic orders and inequalities are being used at an accelerated rate in many diverse areas of probability and statistics. This book provides the first unified, systematic, and accessible treatment of stochasticorders, addressing the growing importance of these orders with the presentation of numerous results that illustrate their usefulness and applicability. Ten insightful chapters emphasize the applications by specialists in probability and statistics, economics, operations research, and reliability theory. Applications include multivariate variability, epidemics, comparisons of risk and risk aversion, scheduling, and systems reliability theory.

Permutation testing for multivariate stochastic ordering and ANOVA designs is a fundamental issue in many scientific fields such as medicine, biology, pharmaceutical studies, engineering, economics, psychology, and social sciences. This book presents new advanced methods and related R codes to perform complex multivariate analyses. The prerequisites are a standard course in statistics and some background in multivariate analysis and R software.

The first complete guide to using the Stochastic Finite Element Method for reliability assessment Unlike other analytical reliability estimation techniques, the Stochastic Finite Element Method (SFEM) can be used for both implicit and explicit performance functions, making it a particularly powerful and robust tool for today's engineer. This book, written by two pioneers in SFEM-based methodologies, shows how to use SFEM for the reliability analysis of a wide range of structures. It begins by reviewing essential risk concepts, currently available risk evaluation procedures, and the use of analytical and sampling methods in estimating risk. Next, it introduces SFEM evaluation procedures, with detailed coverage of displacement-based and stress-based deterministic finite element approaches. Linear, nonlinear, static, and dynamic problems are considered separately to demonstrate the robustness of the methods. The risk or reliability estimation procedure for each case is presented in different chapters, with theory complemented by a useful series of examples. Integrating advanced concepts in risk-based design, finite elements, and mechanics, Reliability Assessment Using Stochastic Finite Element Analysis is vital reading for engineering professionals and students in all areas of the field.

This book is a collective work by many leading scientists, analysts, mathematicians, and engineers who have been working at the front end of reliability science and engineering. The book covers conventional and contemporary topics in reliability science, all of which have seen extended research activities in recent years. The methods presented in this book are real-world examples that demonstrate improvements in essential reliability and availability for industrial equipment such as medical magnetic resonance imaging, power systems, traction drives for a search and rescue helicopter, and air conditioning systems. The book presents real case studies of redundant multi-state air conditioning systems for chemical laboratories and covers assessments of reliability and fault tolerance and availability calculations. Conventional and contemporary topics in reliability engineering are discussed, including degradation, networks, and dynamic reliability, resilience, and multi-state systems, all of which are relatively new topics to the field. The book is aimed at engineers and scientists, as well as postgraduate students involved in reliability design, analysis, and experiments and applied probability and statistics.