Please choose your delivery country and your customer group
The state-of-the-art of risk assessment is critically reviewed, particularly with regard to 'acceptable risks' for risk-based performance-oriented building regulations (design codes). The technology of quantitative (probabilistic) risk assessment is discussed briefly in terms of the process of risk analysis (description), risk evaluation (appraisal) and risk management (prescription). The discussion concerns mainly the general principles, characteristics and limitations of risk assessment procedures, rather than technical details. The assessment of building risks is discussed in sections dealing with empirical (statistical) and theoretical (probabilistic) risk assessments. Conclusions are given concerning applications of probabilistic risk assessments for the purposes of building regulation, and recommendations are given concerning the development of risk-based performance-oriented design codes. In particular it is argued that design decisions should not be based on single-valued measures of risk such as those contrived according to the methods of probabilistic risk assessment (evaluation).