Introduction

Recent devastating man-made and natural hazards brought to focus the need for civil infrastructures to implement measures to reduce their harmful effects. Implementing many such measures, whether physical or operational, is very expensive and could pose a major problem to infrastructure stakeholders. Budget and personnel resource limitations in the current environment make this problem even more critical. To balance the need for adequate performance at optimal/reasonable costs, risk management can offer the best, perhaps only, management paradigm to face the challenges. This chapter introduces the major components of risk and risk management.