| Abstract: | Society requires increasingly that the hazard and risk associated with engineered constructions be quantified. The current paper presents geotechnical hazard assessment in the context of a risk framework. Concepts of uncertainties, reliability, safety and risk are briefly reviewed. The use of the approach is exemplified for offshore facilities, including piled foundations, jack-up structures, gravity foundations and underwater slopes. The applications demonstrate that probabilistic analyses complement the conventional deterministic safety factor and deformation-based analyses, and contribute to achieving a safe and optimum design. The probabilistic approach adds value to the results with a modest additional effort. The conclusions emphasize the usefulness of a risk assessment, the importance of engineering judgement in the assessment and the need for involving multi-disciplinary competences to achieve reliable estimates of hazard and risk. The profession can only gain by implementing probabilistic-based thinking and risk-based approaches more systematically than before. |
