Risk Analysis for Engineers and Scientists

MSE 261, Risk Analysis for Engineers and Scientists (Instructor: Prof. Mosleh, A.) Lecture, four hours; discussion, one hour; outside study, seven hours. Topics include definition and fundamental concepts of risk, sociotechnical context of risk assessment and risk management, perception and reality of risk, risk-informed decision-making, domains of application (safety, health, security, economy, and environment), principal methods of risk assessment, including overview of probability and statistics, how to identify risk scenarios, techniques modeling failures of complex systems (e.g., fault tree and event tree analysis), data collection and analysis, model integration and computational algorithms for risk calculation and identification of risk drivers, simulation approach to risk modeling, uncertainty analysis, examples of risk assessment of engineered systems (e.g., space and aviation, nuclear power, petrochemical plants), other applications (risk of medical procedures, financial risk, natural hazards risk). Letter grading.