Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
This brief chapter looks at some of the milestones in the development of probabilistic
methods and risk analysis in geotechnical engineering, at some of the trends in practice that
drove these developments, and at some of the formative concepts that derived from particu-
lar applications. Our apologies ex anti that we will surely overlook some of the formative
concepts of geotechnical risk and reliability that are personal favorites to particular readers.
Let it be a take-home exercise for the reader to add his or her own favorites to our list, and
as a favor to communicate them to the authors.
The story starts in 1971 and charts a few application areas that stimulated what the
authors consider to be among the most interesting and unique developments: mining, off-
shore, environmental remediation, and dam safety. There were others areas of application
that led to important insights—for example, risk analysis of regional landslides, seismic
hazard analysis, and risk in underground works—but these will have to wait another venue.
The chapter ends by taking stock of current directions in the development of geotechnical
risk and reliability analysis.
12.2 begInnIngS
With the beginning of the 1970s, serious work on geotechnical reliability began to appear.
The first ICOSSAR conference had been held at Columbia in 1969, but contained little of
geotechnical interest. This was followed by the first ICASP, held at the University of Hong
Kong in 1971 and organized by Peter Lumb, which was the initial gathering of people
working on geotechnical reliability (Lumb 1971). Slowly, journal papers began to appear.
The data of Figure 12.1 show the number of papers in the ASCE Database having the
keyword, risk , starting in 1950. Using this as a surrogate for publications on probabilistic
200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2020
Figure 12.1 Numbers of publications in the ASCE Civil Engineering Database having the keyword risk
19 5 0 - 2 011.
 
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