Probability-based safety analysis - value and drawbacks

Probability-based safety analysis of structures has been under development for about 50 years. While there are many advantages, and much progress over that time, there remains a lack of widespread acceptance by the design community and by many researchers in the field of structural engineering. This discussion aims to identify the advantages and difficulties with the methodology of probability-based safety as currently practised, with the hope that this will help to spur some advances that will overcome the difficulties. The term "probability-based safety analysis" in this discussion includes the mathematical treatment of reliability analysis, as well as the various approaches to decision analysis such as code safety factor decisions and optimum design where the objective includes safety and cost. This author fully subscribes to the notions of subjective probability, hence the ideas include applications where probabilities are not based on statistics. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.