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Frontiers of Engineering Reports on Leading-Edge Engineering from the 2001 NAE Symposium on Frontiers of Engineering (2002) / Chapter Skim
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Improbable Is Not Impossible: Decision Making Under Uncertainty
Pages 40-46

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From page 40...
... If building codes are strengthened significantly, the costs of construction could make new homes less affordable. More expensive homes draw money that otherwise might be spent on other goods and services.
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From page 41...
... I will illustrate these ideas with a case study of hazardous materials transportation. MEASURING RISK AND COMPARING ALTERNATIVES The most common measure for estimating risk is expected value.
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From page 42...
... highways is carrying hazmat. Even though the safety record of hazmat transportation is very good, significant public concerns have been raised about the risks to people and the environment from hazmat shipments.
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From page 43...
... Because the probability distributions of the arc attributes are assumed to vary with time, a core step in the process is constructing a probability distribution of travel time from the point of origin to each node along a potential path. Because this is similar to adding together random variables, after a few links, the travel time distribution will be approximately normally distributed, so a procedure based on propagating means and variances can be expected to work well.
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From page 44...
... There are at least two major challenges in this field. The first is improving the scientific enterprise of decision making under uncertainty, by improving methods of estimating probability distributions and methods of optimizing actions considering these distributions.
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From page 45...
... As evidence of subjectivity, those who argue that risk is inherently subjective often point out the great disparities in expenditures by different government agencies to save lives. For example, EPA spends about $7.6 million per year of life saved, whereas NHTSA spends about $78,000 per year of life saved (Tengs et al., 1995~.
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From page 46...
... 2001b. Routing hazardous materials with stochastic dynamic facility attributes: A case study.
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Key Terms

  • travel time
  • multiple objectives
  • arrival time
  • stochastic dynamic
  • hazardous materials

  • building codes
  • stochastic dominance
  • probability distributions
  • routing hazardous
  • expected value

  • residential building
  • partial stochastic
  • life saved
  • vehicles traveling
  • random variable

  • probability distribution
  • normally distributed
  • scientific enterprise
  • england thruway
  • dynamic facility

  • random variables
  • expensive homes
  • dynamic network
  • hazmat transportation
  • homes thereby

  • optimal choice
  • whereas nhtsa
  • cross bronx
  • potential path
  • draw money


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