Understanding the Ecological Validity of Relying Practice as a Basis for Risk Identification

Understanding the reliability of hazardous organizations and their protective systems is central to understanding the risk they produce. Work on “high reliability organization” has done much to illuminate the conditions in which social organization becomes reliable in highly demanding conditions. But risk depends just as much on how relying entities do their relying as it does on the reliability of the entities they rely on. Patterns of relying are often opaque in sociotechnical systems, and processes of relying and being relied on are mutually influencing in complex ways, so the relationship between relying and risk may not be at all obvious. This study was an attempt to study relying as a social practice, in particular analyzing how it had ecological validity in a social organization—how practice was responsive to the conditions in which it took place. This involved observational fieldwork and inductive, qualitative analysis on an offshore oil and gas production platform that was nearing the end of its design life and undergoing refurbishment. The analysis produced four main categories of ecological validity: responsiveness to formal organization, responsiveness to situational contingency, responsiveness to information asymmetry, and responsiveness to sociomateriality. This ecological validity of relying practice should be a primary focus of risk identification, assessing how relying can become mismatched to reliability in certain ways, both when relying practice is responsive to circumstances and when it is not.     

Estimation of system reliability for exponential distributions based on L ranked set sampling

Abstract

In the case where strength and stress both follow exponential distributions, this paper considers the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of the system reliability based on L ranked set sampling (LRSS). The proposed MLE is shown to have existence, uniqueness and asymptotic normality, and its asymptotic variance is obtained by the Fisher information matrix of LRSS. The values of asymptotic relative efficiencies show that the proposed MLE is always more efficient than the MLE using simple random sampling (SRS). However, the MLE using LRSS cannot be written in closed form. Therefore, the modified MLE is proposed using the technique replaced some terms in the maximum likelihood equations by their expectations. The newly modified MLE using LRSS is shown to be superior to the MLE using SRS. Finally, the proposed method is applied to a real data set on metastatic renal carcinoma study.     

Optimization problems for consecutive-2-out-of-n:G system

Abstract

This paper considers the optimization problems for a consecutive-2-out-of-n:G system where n is considered to be fixed or random. When the number of components is constant, the optimal number of components and the optimal replacement time are discussed by minimizing the expected cost rates. Furthermore, we focus on the above discussions again when n is a random variable. We give an approximate value of MTTF and propose the preventive replacement policy, respectively.     

A Discourse on the Incorporation of Organizational Factors into Probabilistic Risk Assessment: Key Questions and Categorical Review

This article presents a discourse on the incorporation of organizational factors into probabilistic risk assessment (PRA)/probabilistic safety assessment (PSA), a topic of debate since the 1980s that has spurred discussions among industry, regulatory agencies, and the research community. The main contributions of this article include (1) identifying the four key open questions associated with this topic; (2) framing ongoing debates by considering differing perspectives around each question; (3) offering a categorical review of existing studies on this topic to justify the selection of each question and to analyze the challenges related to each perspective; and (4) highlighting the directions of research required to reach a final resolution for each question. The four key questions are: (I) How significant is the contribution of organizational factors to accidents and incidents? (II) How critical, with respect to improving risk assessment, is the explicit incorporation of organizational factors into PRA? (III) What theoretical bases are needed for explicit incorporation of organizational factors into PRA? (IV) What methodological bases are needed for the explicit incorporation of organizational factors into PRA? Questions I and II mainly analyze PRA literature from the nuclear domain. For Questions III and IV, a broader review and categorization is conducted of those existing cross-disciplinary studies that have evaluated the effects of organizational factors on safety (not solely PRA-based) to shed more light on future research needs.     

计算知识论视域下的科学发现逻辑研究

在科学发现逻辑受制于描述性的传统研究路径，经历衰落和缓慢复苏的大背景之下，计算知识论为科学发现逻辑提供了一个全新的规范性研究框架。该框架不仅为科学发现逻辑做了系统性辩护，而且围绕发现问题的可解性做了许多规范性讨论。虽然其有关具体规范性的研究距离现实的科学发现仍然较远，但这一路径对未来发现逻辑研究走向的启发意义毋庸置疑。     

Risk-Informed Requirements for Design and Assessment of Structures Under Temporary Use

The relatively high failure rates, with important consequences in many cases, suggest that the implicitly acceptable risk levels corresponding to temporary civil engineering structures and activities might exceed the bounds of normally acceptable levels associated with different societal activities. Among other reasons, this may be attributed to the lack of a rational approach for the assessment of risks associated with the different technologies supporting these activities in general, and for structures in particular. There is a need for establishing appropriate target reliability levels for structures under temporary use taking into account specific circumstances such as reduced risk exposure times. This issue is being addressed in this article. Acceptance criteria for building-structure-related risks to persons obtained in prior studies are adapted to the special circumstances of nonpermanent risk exposure. Thereby, the general principle followed is to maintain the same risk levels per time unit as for permanently occupied buildings. The adaptation is based on the statistical annual fatality rate, a life safety risk metric that allows for a consistent comparison of risks across different societal activities and technologies. It is shown that the target reliability indices taking account of the temporary use of buildings might be significantly higher than the values suggested for permanently used structures.     

Bayesian estimation of reliability using time-to-failure distribution of parametric degradation models

This paper focusses on computing the Bayesian reliability of components whose performance characteristics (degradation – fatigue and cracks) are observed during a specified period of time. Depending upon the nature of degradation data collected, we fit a monotone increasing or decreasing function for the data. Since the components are supposed to have different lifetimes, the rate of degradation is assumed to be a random variable. At a critical level of degradation, the time to failure distribution is obtained. The exponential and power degradation models are studied and exponential density function is assumed for the random variable representing the rate of degradation. The maximum likelihood estimator and Bayesian estimator of the parameter of exponential density function, predictive distribution, hierarchical Bayes approach and robustness of the posterior mean are presented. The Gibbs sampling algorithm is used to obtain the Bayesian estimates of the parameter. Illustrations are provided for the train wheel degradation data.     

众包标注质量控制研究

众包是近年来流行的一种分布式商业模式,采用众包方式获取标注是一种快速廉价获取海量数据标签的有效方式,由于众包平台中普遍存在不认真完成任务的作弊用户,众包标注质量难以保证.为有效提高众包标注准确性,通过学习标注者的可靠性,实现基于标注者的可靠性进行动态任务分配,采用贪婪的预测模型实现对多个标注者提交的标签进行聚集,获得高质量的众包标注结果.实验结果表明,该方法能获得比基准算法更高的标注准确性,有效实现众包标注质量控制.     

涡旋压缩机异形封头可靠性设计

为评估异形封头结构在涡旋压缩机运行过程中的可靠性,参考压力容器椭圆形封头设计理论,采用常规设计方 法对封头进行了结构设计和强度校核;基于封头材料性能、结构尺寸等设计参数的分散性,将各参数作为正态分布的基 本变量,对封头结构进行了可靠性设计,并对基本变量分布参数的灵敏度进行分析。计算结果表明,与常规设计方法相 比,可靠性设计在确保结构安全性的前提下,同时保证了设计的经济性;影响封头可靠度的主要因素是材料屈服极限、工 作压力和壁厚。