Book Review
air blasts, as well as building security. This chapter also shows
Review of Risk Management in Civil
Infrastructure by Mohammed M. Ettouney
and Sreenivas Alampalli
CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL 33431; 2016; ISBN 978-1-482-20844-3; 504
pp.; $143.96.
Anil K. Agrawal, M.ASCE
Professor of Civil Engineering, Dept. of Civil Engineering, City College
of New York, New York, NY 10031. E-mail: agrawal@ccny.cuny.edu
Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by 139.255.192.18 on 03/13/24. Copyright ASCE. For personal use only; all rights reserved.
Risk has always been difficult to define. Many define risk as simply
the possibility of the occurrence of undesirable events. When risk is
defined in this fashion, either subjectively or objectively, it only
gives the reliability component of risk and ignores the associated
consequences. In this book, the authors define risk in a manner that
is consistent with its historical uses in other communities (such as
insurance or finance), while being compatible with civil engineer-
ing needs and practices. At the same time, the authors also recog-
nize and incorporate certain important and essential practices in
civil engineering, such as field inspection and resilience. They
argue that this has the advantage of being accurate while permitting
stakeholders to use the available tools of each paradigm inter-
changeably. Beyond definitions, the authors hold that the successful
application of risk-based practices in civil engineering requires
comprehensive handling. The first chapter introduces these defini-
tions and gives a flowchart for the rest of the contents covered in the
book. The authors note that the concept of risk should be used in a
complete risk management framework that includes five comple-
mentary components: assessment, acceptance, treatment, monitor-
ing, and communications. Five chapters of the book address each of
these components in detail.
The second chapter of the work covers analytical risk meth-
ods. The authors state that the comprehensive method has the
following requirements: “Realistic and accurate modeling link-
ages/interactions between variables; Accommodation of uncer-
tainties associated with different variables; Accurate modeling
of observations at any given time (snapshot or a time period);
Accommodation of objective and subjective variables and perti-
nent combinations; Seamless accommodation of decision under
uncertainty while accounting for all of the above attributes;
Ease of modeling complex models; and Ease of changing, add-
ing to, or trimming complex models.” Accommodating all these
subjective and objective requirements is a difficult task; hence,
the authors utilize a probabilistic graph network (GN) to meet
them. The remainder of the chapter covers GN techniques that
can be used in handling different risk management components.
The third chapter explores risk assessment using GN methods
and weighted averages. Risk assessment examples for tunnels
and mass transit stations are offered. In addition, the authors give
examples showing risk assessments for earthquakes and bomb
© ASCE 07518001-1
J. Bridge Eng., 2018, 23(3): 07518001
examples of resilience assessment while discussing its relation-
ship with risk assessment.
Risk acceptance has always been a difficult issue in civil engi-
neering. In the fourth chapter, the authors first cover wholly subjec-
tive and semisubjective (with some objective backing) acceptance
thresholds and then show how to set risk acceptance thresholds in
practical situations. Several examples show how to set risk accep-
tance thresholds in other practical cases, including setting deteriora-
tion risk acceptance and the establishment of risk acceptance while
grandfathering an existing infrastructure system.
Risk treatment is the natural next step in a risk management–
based process and is covered in Chapter 5. In this chapter, the
authors differentiate between risk treatment and risk mitigation,
with the latter as a subset of the former. They then proceed to subdi-
vide the risk treatment process into three phases: choosing a treat-
ment strategy, planning and prioritizing projects and solutions, and
executing the strategy. The authors also show that the popular
subjective-consequences-likelihood diagram approach to selecting
a risk treatment strategy is not suitable and might lead to suboptimal
decisions.
As infrastructure ages, risks increase due to deterioration or
increased demand. In many situations, monitoring changing risks is
not pursued as an integral part of a balanced risk management
scheme. In Chapter 6, the authors address risk monitoring. Besides
the conventional monitoring of just capacity or demands, they also
discuss deterioration risk monitoring and forecasting, inference
processes in risk monitoring, and the differences between risk mon-
itoring and reliability monitoring.
Chapter 7 details risk communications, an often-forgotten com-
ponent of risk management. This chapter helps readers recognize
the importance of risk communications and offers tools that can aid
them to incorporate risk communications techniques in their proj-
ects as well as research efforts. Risk communications are explored
from both the technical and management perspectives. An objective
example of communications efficiency in evaluating risk communi-
cations projects is offered in the end.
The authors provide numerous examples and case studies
throughout the manuscript. Many of those examples are fairly
practical and can be used, with appropriate modifications, by
practitioners and decision makers. To focus on practical risk
management–based applications, they devote the final chapter
of the book, Chapter 8, to several case studies, including the
progressive collapse of bridges, cascading effects during super
storms, structurally deficient bridges, functional obsolescence,
and suspension bridge security.
In summary, in this book, the authors fill a sorely needed gap
in the civil engineering risk management literature by offering
comprehensive and balanced coverage of the subject. As such,
both researchers and practitioners can benefit from the book.
Researchers can build on its numerous original ideas while own-
ers can utilize its practice-oriented case studies to enrich their
decision-making efforts.
J. Bridge Eng.