Techniques of performance-based design in fire safety have developed notably in the past two decades. One of the reasons for departing from the prescriptive methods is the ability of performance-based methods to form a scientific basis for the cost-risk-benefit analysis of different fire safety alternatives. Apart from few exceptions, observation of past fires has shown that the structure’s contribution to the overall fire resistance was considerably underestimated. The purpose of this research is to outline a risk-based design approach for structures in fire. Probabilistic methods are employed to ascertain uniform reliability indices in line with the classical trend in code development. Modern design codes for complex phenomena such as fire have been structured to facilitate design computations. Prescriptive design methods specify fire protection methods for structural systems based on laboratory controlled and highly restrictive testing regimes. Those methods inherently assume that the tested elements behave similarly in real structures irrespective of their loading, location or boundary conditions. This approach is contested by many researchers, and analyses following fire incidents indicated alarming discrepancy between anticipated and actual structural behaviour during real fires. In formulating design and construction codes, code writers deal with the inherent uncertainties by setting a ceiling to the potential risk of failure. The latter process is implemented by specifying safety parameters, that are derived via probabilistic techniques aimed at harmonising the risks ensuing different load scenarios. The code structure addresses the probability of failure with adequate detail and accuracy. The other component of the risk metric, namely the consequence of failure, is a subjective field that assumes a multitude of variables depending on the context of the problem. In codified structural design, the severity of failure is implicitly embodied in the different magnitudes of safety indices applied to different modes of structural response. This project introduces a risk-based method for the design of structures in fire. It provides a coherent approach to a quantified treatment of risk elements that meets the demands of performance-based fire safety methods. A number of proposals are made for rational acceptable risk and reliability parameters in addition to a damage index with applications in structural fire safety design. Although the example application of the proposed damage index is a structure subjected to fire effects, the same rationale can be easily applied to the assessment of structural damage due to other effects.

In 1996, a concept was proposed by the UK Ministry of Defence with the intention of making the field of reliability more useful to the end user, particularly within the field of military aerospace. This idea was the Maintenance Free Operating Period (MFOP), a duration of time in which the overall system can complete all of its required missions without the need to undergo emergency repairs or maintenance, with a defined probability of success. The system can encounter component or subsystem failures, but these must be carried with no effect to the overall mission, until such time as repair takes place. It is thought that advanced technologies such as redundant systems, prognostics and diagnostics will play a major role in the successful use of MFOP in practical applications. Many types of system operate missions that are made up of several sequential phases. For a mission to be successful, the system must satisfactorily complete each of the objectives in each of the phases. If the system fails or cannot complete its goals in any one phase, the mission has failed. Each phase will require the system to use different items, and so the failure logic changes from phase to phase. Mission unreliability is defined as the probability that the system fails to function successfully during at least one phase of the mission. An important problem is the efficient calculation of the value of mission unreliability. This thesis investigates the creation of a modelling method to consider as many features of systems undergoing both MFOPs and phased missions as possible. This uses Petri nets, a type of digraph allowing storage and transit of tokens which represent system states. A simple model is presented, following which, a more complex model is developed and explained, encompassing those ideas which are believed to be important in delivering a long MFOP with a high degree of confidence. A demonstration of the process by which the modelling method could be used to improve the reliability performance of a large system is then shown. The complex model is employed in the form of a Monte-Carlo simulation program, which is applied to a life-size system such as may be encountered in the real world. Improvements are suggested and results from their implementation analysed.

Disruptions in the transport system can have severe impacts for affected individuals, businesses and the society as a whole. In this research, vulnerability is seen as the risk of unplanned system disruptions, with a focus on large, rare events. Vulnerability analysis aims to provide decision support regarding preventive and restorative actions, ideally as an integrated part of the planning process.The thesis specifically develops the methodology for vulnerability analysis of road networks and considers the effects of suddenly increased travel times and cancelled trips following road link closures. The major part consists of model-based studies of different aspects of vulnerability, in particular the dichotomy of system efficiency and user equity, applied to the Swedish road network. We introduce the concepts of link importance as the overall impact of closing a particular link, and regional exposure as the impact for individuals in a particular region of, e.g., a worst-case or an average-case scenario (Paper I). By construction, a link is important if the normal flow across it is high and/or the alternatives to this link are considerably worse, while a traveller is exposed if a link closure along her normal route is likely and/or the best alternative is considerably worse. Using regression analysis we show that these relationships can be generalized to municipalities and counties, so that geographical variations in vulnerability can be explained by variations in network density and travel patterns (Paper II). The relationship between overall impacts and user disparities are also analyzed for single link closures and is found to be negative, i.e., the most important links also have the most equal distribution of impacts among individuals (Paper III).In addition to links' roles for transport efficiency, the thesis considers their importance as rerouting alternatives when other links are disrupted (Paper IV). Such redundancy-important roads, found often to be running in parallel to highways with heavy traffic, may be warranted a higher standard than their typical use would suggest. We also study the vulnerability of the road network under area-covering disruptions, representing for example flooding, heavy snowfall or forest fires (Paper V). In contrast to single link failures, the impacts of this kind of events are largely determined by the population concentration, more precisely the travel demand within, in and out of the disrupted area itself, while the density of the road network is of small influence. Finally, the thesis approaches the issue of how to value the delays that are incurred by network disruptions and, using an activity-based modelling approach, we illustrate that these delay costs may be considerably higher than the ordinary value of time, in particular during the first few days after the event when travel conditions are uncertain (Paper VI). / QC 20101004