L. Duckstein - Böcker

Special References to Hydrosystems Under Changes of Physical or Climatic Environment Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on 'Engineering Risk and Reliability in a Changing Phys ical Environment, New Developments in Resources Management with Applications to Non-Stead y Conditions', Deauville, France, May 24--June 4, 1993

Ambitious as the enterprise was, and as demanding as the planning effort promised to be, we set out to organize the IX International Conference on Multiple criteria Decision Making (MCDM) which took place in Fairfax, Virginia, on August 5-8, 1990. We knew it was ambitious because the number of participants expected to attend the conference would approach 160, larger than that of earlier conferences, and because it would include a sizable contingent of 39 participants from the soviet union and Eastern Europe, possibly the largest yet. In many ways, it may be appropriate to say, this international conference presented a microcosm of peoples and new ideas that reflected the extraordinary events that were to take place in Europe and other parts of the world during that summer of 1990. with the theme: "Multiple criteria Decision Making and support at the Interface of Industry, Business and Government" we wanted to focus on new analytical methodologies and management tools, quantitative and qualitative evaluation of decision techniques, the design of experiments to test existing and proposed methods, and the experience gained in the application of these MCDM methods and tools to real-world problems during the last 10-15 years. Many analytical, behavioral, and technological advances are to be made, we feel, at the interface of MCDM Theory, the Behavioral Sciences, operations Research, Systems Engineering, Decision Theory, Mathematical Sciences, and Information Technology. viii The current proliferation of computer-based decision tools offers new challenges and opportunities.

Hydraulic, hydrologic and water resources engineers have been concerned for a long time about failure phenomena. One of the major concerns is the definition of a failure event E, of its probability of occurrence PtE), and of the complementary notion of reliability. However, as the stochastic aspects of hydraulics and water resources engineering were developed, words such as "failure," "reliability," and "risk" took on different meanings for different specialists. For example, "risk" is defined in a Bayesian framework as the expected loss resulting from a precisely defined failure event, while according to the practice of stochastic hydraulics it is the probability of occurrence of a failure event. The need to standardize the various concepts and operational definitions generated numerous exciting discussions between the co-editors of this book during 1983-84 when L. Duckstein, under sponsorship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (FRG), was working with E. Plate at the Institute of Hydrology and Water Resources of the University of Karlsruhe. After consulting with the Scientific Affairs Division of NATO, an organizing committee was formed. This comittee -­ J. Bernier (France), M. Benedini (Italy), S. Sorooshian (U. S. A. ), and co-directors L. Duckstein (U. S. A. ) and E. J. Plate (F. R. G. ) -- brought into being this NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI). Precisely stated, the purpose of this ASI was to present a tutorial overview of existing work in the broad area of reliability while also pointing out topics for further development.