ABSTRACT
Civil engineering is a high-risk business. Its professional institution in Britain was founded “to direct the great sources of power in Nature for the use and convenience of man”. Robust design is a methodology that attempts to ensure that the responses are insensitive to both the input uncertainty and component variations without actually eliminating the causes. The same risk can be a combination of a high probability of failure and limited consequences, or of limited probability of failure and a high level of losses. It should be noted that as a rule, for some kinds of failure, its probability and consequences are inversely proportional. Construction activity in any industry should proceed with total compliance with the requirements of design regulations and technological procedures. It is commonly assumed that the structure would fail if these requirements are not satisfied. The probability of failure is the main numerical measure of the structure’s reliability.
