ABSTRACT
The purpose of this introductory chapter is to present a case to the geotechnical community (including the rock community) to adopt reliability principles as a basis for design and practice. Engineers should be open to applying simplified (semi-probabilistic) or direct probabilistic approaches to reliability-based design (RBD), depending on the extent in which the design situations could be standardized. RBD refers to any design methodology that applies reliability principles, explicitly or otherwise. The intent is certainly not to advocate indiscriminate adoption of structural reliability principles, but to consider how reliability principles (which are very general) can be integrated within the larger body of geotechnical practice in a judicious way to improve certain aspects, particularly those amenable tomathematical treatment and to occasions where there is considerable practical value to do so. Aspects amenable to mathematical treatment typically fall under the category of “known unknowns’’ where some measured data and/or past experience exist for limited site-specific data to be supplemented by both objective regional data and subjective judgment derived from comparable sites elsewhere.
