DISCUSSIONS AND CLOSURES

Table 1. Values of R E ⫽H D 兩 D 共After Redefinition兲

Discussion of ‘‘Redundancy Index m⫽2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
of Lifeline Systems’’ by Masaru Hoshiya
Ductile system 0.811 1.32 1.59 1.43 1.86 1.85 2.25 2.23
and Kinya Yamamoto 共cf. Table 1兲
September 2002, Vol. 128, No. 9, pp. 961–968. Brittle system 0.384 0.804 1.12 1.26 1.34 1.49 1.47 1.71
DOI: 10.1061/共ASCE兲0733-9399共2002兲128:9共961兲 共cf. Table 2兲

S. K. Au1
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by New York University on 05/15/15. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.

1
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological
Univ., Singapore 639798. E-mail: cskau@ntu.edu.sg
The concept of redundancy has long existed in engineering design
philosophy, but there has not been a common consensus on its
quantitative definition 共assuming it is quantifiable兲, especially in a
probabilistic context where effects of system uncertainties are in-
corporated. In order for a redundancy index to be useful, its defi-
nition and resulting implications should be consistent with the
intuitive notion of redundancy.
The subject paper presents an interesting discussion on quan-
tifying redundancy of engineering systems using conditional en-
tropy and its applications. Some discrepancies in conclusion
about system redundancy, however, have been found when com-
paring the proposed redundancy index R E with other existing in-
dexes through the numerical examples presented in the paper. A
closer examination reveals that the discrepancies essentially stem
from the normalizing factor log2 m in the definition of R E . A
short conclusion of this discussion is that it may be more appro-
priate to redefine R E without the normalizing factor, i.e., as R E
⫽H D 兩 D . The problems associated with the normalizing factor
will be discussed through two examples.
Example 1
Consider the case when all the damage sets 兵 D 1 ,D 2 , . . . ,D m⫺1 其
are absent so that D⫽D F . An example of this is a system with
only one link. Thus, the system will not be operational whenever
any one of its components fails. It is then clear that the system has
no redundancy, and a properly defined redundancy index should
assume its minimum possible value.
In this case, in the context of Eq. 共8兲 in the paper, m⫽1,
P D i 兩 D ⫽0 for i⫽1, . . . ,m⫺1, and P D F 兩 D ⫽1. By noting that the
first sum in the numerator of Eq. 共8兲 vanishes 共using the usual
interpretation in probability theory that 0⫻log2 0⫽0), one obtains
H D兩D ⫺1 log2 1
R E⫽ ⫽ (1)
log2 m log2 1
which is of the indeterminate form 0/0 since log2 1⫽0. If one
interprets by canceling out the term log2 1 in Eq. 共1兲, then R E
⫽⫺1, which is absurd. One interpretation that leads to a reason-
able conclusion is to take the log2 1 in the numerator to zero first
before dividing it by the denominator, in which case R E ⫽0 and is
consistent with intuition.
Although this example appears to be of an interpretation prob-
lem, the next example indicates that the normalizing factor indeed
leads to problems in its meaning and use.
Example 2
Consider the parallel link system as shown in Fig. 1 of the paper.
Assume m⭓2 and P D i 兩 D ⫽1/m for all i⫽1,...,m, then
m⫺1
1 1 1 1
H D 兩 D ⫽⫺ 兺
i⫽1 m
log2 ⫺ log2 ⫽log2 m
m m m
(2)
and so
H D兩D log2 m
R E⫽ ⫽ ⫽1 (3)
log2 m log2 m
This means that R E is always equal to 1, regardless of the number
of links in the system. This conflicts with the intuition that in this
case a system with more links should have a higher redundancy.
In fact, the conditional probability of system failure given at least
one component has been damaged, which coincides with the re-
dundancy index proposed by De et al. 共1989兲, is given by
1
P 共 D F兩 D 兲 ⫽ (4)
m
which decreases as m increases, and hence, suggests an increase
in redundancy with m.
Note that for a given m the maximum value of H D 兩 D is log2 m,
and so the normalizing factor log2 m has the effect of comparing
the uncertainty of D with its maximum attainable value of a sys-
tem with m links. This, however, causes problems in the use of R E
for comparing the redundancies of systems with a different num-
ber of links, which is of concern when studying the benefits on
redundancy of introducing new members, for example. As can be
seen in Table 1 in the paper, as m increases, the value of R E tends
to decrease, while on the contrary the value of
R⫽ P共operational兩at least one component fails兲 increases. In fact,
if R E were defined without the normalizing factor, which is then
equal to the conditional entropy of D, i.e., R E ⫽H D 兩 D , then the
values of R E will show an increasing trend as the number of links
m increases 共see Table 1 in this discussion兲, and will be consistent
with the conclusions indicated by R Z and R.
Finally, the discusser would like to point out that the insensi-
tivity of R Z is due to the relatively high reliability of the weakest
redundant component in the system that leads to a small uncer-
tainty in the operational modes and renders the conditional en-
tropy 共given the system is operational兲 relatively insensitive to the
conditional uncertainty of the component failure modes 共given
component damage has occurred but system is still operational兲.
Reference
De, R. S., Karamchandani, A., and Cornell, C. A. 共1989兲. ‘‘Study of
redundancy in near-ideal parallel structural systems.’’ Proc., 5th Int.
Conf. on Structural Safety and Reliability, San Francisco, 975–982.

1104 / JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING MECHANICS © ASCE / SEPTEMBER 2003

J. Eng. Mech. 2003.129:1105-1105.


Closure to ‘‘Redundancy Index
of Lifeline Systems’’ by Masaru Hoshiya
and Kinya Yamamoto
September 2002, Vol. 128, No. 9, pp. 961–968.
DOI: 10.1061/共ASCE兲0733-9399共2002兲128:9共961兲
Masaru Hoshiya, M.ASCE,1 and Kinya Yamamoto2
1
Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Musashi Institute of Technology,
1-28-1, Tamazutsumi Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 158-8557, Japan. E-mail:
mhoshiya@eng.musashi-tech.ac.jp
2
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Kogyokusha College of
Technology, 5-14-2, Nishi-Gotanda Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 141-0031,
Japan. E-mail: yamamoto@kogyokusha.ac.jp
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by New York University on 05/15/15. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.
The authors would like to thank Professor S. K. Au very much for
his constructive discussions on our paper.
The discusser suggests that the index R E proposed by the au-
thors will become a better index if only the numerator is used to
define R E . The reason, however, that we decided to normalize the
conditional entropy into the range from 0 to 1 is our desire to
examine the degree of redundancy that a current system retains
and to know the improvement on the redundancy when the sys-
tem is strengthened. From the practical point of view, it is also
necessary that the redundancy index retains its applicability to
decision making in engineering system design and practice.
The discusser points out that the redundancy index R E does
not take the value of 0, but the value of 0 divided by 0, for the
case of a system with m⫽1. According to the discusser this indi-
cates a shortcoming in the definition of R E , since intuitively such
a system should have no redundancy. This discrepancy is due to
the normalization of the conditional entropy by the maximum
value of log2(m). The authors believe, however, that the index
becomes more useful when normalized, as it provides a better
way to understand the degree of redundancy. For example, con-
sider a system of m members having R E ⫽0.05. It can be easily
determined that the redundancy is very low in this case, whereas
it is very high if R E ⫽0.9, since R E can only take values between
zero and unity. If the index is not normalized and R E ⫽4.89, then
what does this value mean regarding the degree of redundancy?
An absolute value without units tells us nothing in this case.
JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING MECHANICS © ASCE / SEPTEMBER 2003 / 1105
J. Eng. Mech. 2003.129:1105-1105.
When plural existing systems need to be compared, the redun-
dancy differences among them can only be judged relatively. In
such a case, it is not possible to make a final decision about
whether or not all systems considered need disaster mitigation
measures, based on values of a non-normalized redundancy
index. As a conclusion, the authors have introduced a normalized
redundancy index R E .
The discusser shows also a discrepancy by using an example
in which R E is constant, taking a unity value regardless of the
number of members m in a parallel system if P Di/D ⫽1/m for all i
from 1 to m. In this case, the redundancy index R E does not
increase with m, a behavior that seems to be illogical intuitively.
The values of P(D i ) presented in Tables 1 and 2 and the corre-
sponding graphs presented in Fig. 4 make it clear that both par-
allel cable systems of ductile and brittle materials indicate chain
failure phenomena when the number of components increases,
though the severity of the phenomenon is different. It is indicated
that the degree of redundancy is more or less the same, at least for
systems with values of m greater than 6. This fact is understand-
ably attributed to the chain failure. On the other hand, the fact that
the ductile systems with m⫽2 – 6 presented in Fig. 4 show a trend
of decreasing R E should not be used for comparison purposes,
since R E simply indicates the current redundancy relative to its
possible maximum value within the system. It can be therefore
deduced that the system reduces its relative redundancy due to
chain failure when the value of m value changes from 2 to 6.
However, we would like to mention that the suggestion of the
discusser that R E will become a more useful index only if the
normalizing factor log2(m) is discarded is indeed worthy of con-
sideration. Especially because of the case when m⫽1 and R E
becomes subsequently undefined, the authors are ready to inves-
tigate the topic again, regardless of the aforementioned answers.
The authors further agree with the discusser’s reasoning regarding
the insensitivity of R Z , and believe that R E is superior to the
other two indices R Z and R R , since the latter index R R unfortu-
nately cannot express the effect of chain failure occurrence as
clearly shown in Tables 1 and 2 and Fig. 4.
Finally, the authors agree with the necessity to define the re-
dundancy index in a mathematically valid and consistent way,
keeping at the same time the intuitive notion of redundancy.