Addressing uncertainty to make infrastructure safer

Some infrastructure is experiencing a fast rate of deterioration as a result of poor design/ construction/ maintenance or more demanding loads than anticipated, and many buildings, transport, and energy infrastructure are getting close to the ends of their design lives. There is a need for assessing the safety of these structures, i.e., to check that the probability of the structural response falling beyond an established threshold for a given period of time is acceptable. This calculation involves defining a number of input variables that include loading as well as structural properties such as moduli of elasticity, material strength, geometry, boundary conditions, etc.