CHAPTER 5:

Risk Management

Instructor:

Dr. Yunes Mogheir

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 Introduction
The simple definition of engineering risk as the probability of
failure does not reflect completely the characteristics of the
physical system operating under risk.

If the system is performing safely, then engineering risk tends

to zero. Inversely, when risk approaches to 1, the system is likely
to fail.
In order to describe in more detail the behavior of the water
system under risk, some other performance indices and figures
of merit (value)

Among the figures of merit perhaps the most important is the

one incorporating the consequences of failure.

Consequences may be expressed in economic units (costs,

benefits) or in more general terms e.g. environmental
consequences or lives.
this should be an essential element for the
management of risks and decision
analysis. -
Performance Indices and Figures of Merit

A water resources system operating under risk should be

designed in such a way that safety prevails during its life-time.

On the other hand, the notion of safety does not imply that the
system is risk-free. In addition, the engineering risk as an index
characterizing the state of safety of the system is not sufficient
to indicate all the properties of a system under risk conditions.

Performance indices (PIS) are measures indicating how the

system performs when external conditions create adverse
effects such as extreme loading.

During some time periods incidents may occur which would

make the system unable to accomplish its function.

These incidents are not catastrophic events, but the system

may possibly recover.

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Characteristic examples of the
behaviour of a hydrosystem under risk PIs should provide
are: quantitative
1. a pipe distribution system which can information about the
deliver for some time only part of the incident related
demand, or properties of the
2. a sewer system overflowing at system
certain time periods.

Incident-related PIS which may be calculated at every time

t:
PI1: grade of service
PI2: quality of service
PI3,: speed of response
PI4: reliability
PI5: incident period
PI6: mission reliability
PI7: availability describe the
PI8: resilience (flexibility) and characteristics of the
PI9: vulnerability. system in cases
of incident
- or failure
Resilience: this is a measure of the reaction time of the
system in order to return to safe operating conditions.

A system of high resilience responds quickly to a given

incident and returns quickly to normal state.

A low resilience system needs long times to recover.

Vulnerability: it is an index measuring the degree of damage

which an incident causes to a system.

Highly sophisticated systems are the most vulnerable (an

incident could cause complete destruction to its components).

Examples of high vulnerable systems are complex electronic

devices, sophisticated computer systems and structures such
as arch dams with very small safety factor, groundwater
pollution,

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Figures of merit (FMs) are defined as functions of the
performance indices (super criteria) ." If there are different
PIS, then a FM, may be expressed as:

Two FMs are of particular interest :

1. sustainability (SU) and
b. engineering risk (RI)

- Sustainability is a combination of high resilience and low

vulnerability.

Engineering risk may be generally expressed by a joint

probability distribution over all possible FMs.

For example risk may be defined as the probability of having a

given reliability and resilience.

Economic consequences, such as costs and benefits may be

expressed as function of risk. -
Objective Functions and Optimization
The main objective of solving environmental engineering
problems is to minimize total costs while maintaining a given
degree of technical reliability .
- From engineering modelling and the design of the project a
number of options or alternative solutions usually emerge.

-The selection among these, which may be based on technical

or other criteria, is part of the decision problem.

- Functional relationships may be found between the decision

variables in order to formulate the objectives of the problem.

-In these cases analytical or numerical optimization techniques

can be applied (Genetic Algorithm, Simulated Annealingetc).

- Using such techniques, maximization or minimization of the

objective functions may be achieved under either certainty or
risk conditions. This facilitates the choice of an "optimum"
solution. -
 Dam Construction Example
A flood Dam is to be constructed having a crest height h
above the mean water level ho (Fig 5.1)

To select a value for the variable h, the uncertainty conditions and the
objectives of the project should be first defined.

If we consider the consequences of a flood, we should have different

kinds of damages: damage to properties, loss of lives, environmental
consequences, decrease in visual values, etc.

One reasonable objective should be to minimize the sum of both

investment and damage costs.

The investment costs CI

increase proportionally to
height h, The function CI
(h) has the form:

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Dam Construction Example:
Risk may be taken as a decision variable in optimization. As a
very simple example let consider the hydrological risk for the
case of the flood levee. The engineering risk PF is the
probability of overtopping. This may be expressed as

- From Eq. (5.5) a relation may be found between pf and h.

The objective function given by the Eq. (5.3) may be written
as a function of pf and the optimum solution may be found in
terms of pf or (-ln pf).

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At every level of risk there are consequences implying potential
damages.

-These may be expressed in terms of damage costs having

monetary or non-monetary units. Protection against damages
should imply some other costs, called protection costs.

- For low risk, the damage costs are low and they increase as
risk is increasing.

- The opposite is true for the protection costs: high investment

is necessary to keep the risk as low as possible.

- As the risk is increasing the protection costs are decreasing.

Generally speaking, we can state that

(a) damage costs are increasing as the risk increases; they

decrease as the safety increases
(b) protection costs are decreasing as the risk increases; they
increase with the safety.
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 _ Risk Matrix

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 End Of

Good Luck in the

Final Exam