Mission and work program of the Joint Committee on Structural Safety

Publication VrFaCh03

Authors

Ton Vrouwenvelder, Michael H. Faber and Marios Chryssanthopoulos

Abstract

The Joint Committee on Structural Safety (JCSS for short) is concerned with fundamental and pre-normative research in the field of Structural Reliability and Risk Assessment, and is directly and indirectly involved in the development of ISO-standards and Eurocodes. The JCSS acts on behalf of five international research organizations, namely IABSE (bridges), CIB (buildings), fib (concrete), ECCS (steel) and RILEM (material testing). The basic idea is that reliability and safety principles should be the same for all types of materials and for all types of structures encountered in civil and building engineering structures. The message spread by the JCSS is that decisions with respect to structural design and assessment should be based on the principles of Bayesian decision theory. It is claimed that such an approach offers the best framework to combine theoretical knowledge, field and laboratory observations, experience and judgement into consistent and rational decisions. The two main present activities of the JCSS are the development of a Probabilistic Model Code and a Guidance Document on Risk Assessment. Within this framework there is special focus on issues like code calibration, robustness requirements, durability modeling and assessment of existing structures, inspection and maintenance strategies, and target reliabilities. This paper will give an overview and discuss the main features of these topics. For detailed information reference will be made to other publications.

Published in/by

Proceedings ICASP9, 9th International Conference on Applications of Statistics and Probability in Civil Engineering, Vol. 2, San Francisco, USA, July 6-9, 2003 pp. 989-994.