Buffered environmental contours

Abstract

The main idea of this paper is to use the notion of buffered failure probability from probabilistic structural design, first introduced by Rockafellar & Royset (2010), to introduce buffered environmental contours. Classical environmental contours are used in structural design in order to obtain upper bounds on the failure probabilities of a large class of designs. The purpose of buffered failure probabilities is the same. However, in contrast to classical environmental contours, this new concept does not just take into account failure vs. functioning, but also to which extent the system is failing. For example, this is relevant when considering the risk of flooding: We are not just interested in knowing whether a river has flooded. The damages caused by the flooding greatly depends on how much the water has risen above the standard level. © 2018 Taylor & Francis