Probability Concepts in Engineering Planning and Design, Basic Principles (Probability Concepts in Engineering Planning & Design)

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Summary: Indispensable books for safety and reliability engineers
Review: Alhough Ang and Tang's Volumes I and II are already over 20 years old, I consider these books as one of the best on probabilistic design methods in civil engineering. The books cover topics such as 'statistical decision analysis (including CBA, MCA, MCDM)', 'queueing models', 'extreme value theory', 'Monte Carlo simulation', 'failure probability calculation' and 'system reliability techniques'. A huge amount of examples are embedded in the theory. They are ideal to be used as examination questions (which the reviewer succesfully does for his courses on 'Probabilistic Design' and 'Probabilistic Design in Hydraulic Engineering' at TU Delft, The Netherlands).

Civil engineers with an interest in design of maritime -, hydraulic - and coastal structures will miss the probabilistic description of sea waves and current loads. The second edition (2000) of Goda may fill this gap (available at Amazon under 981023256X). Engineers interested in probabilistic description of structural dynamics are referred to the second edition (2004) of YK Lin and GQ Cai (available at Amazon under 0071438009). The connection of probability theory with finite element models (one of the reviewer's main fields of interest) is not covered by the above mentioned books. Something for Volume III...?


Rating:
Summary: Still the best book
Review: I have used this book and Vol 2 in my graduate and undergraduate courses. Having used a variety of texts for teaching and learning about probability and statistics in an engineering context, I would say the two volumes by Ang and Tang have no rivals. Lots and lots of good engineering type problems.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent text for beginning engineering probability study.
Review: We used this text as the first half of a graduate course in engineering reliability. It presented the concepts clearly and in terms of engineering problems rather than card picking and coin flipping like many other probability and statistics texts. It also provided a thorough treatment of the mathematical basis of the sciences of probability and statistics.

The second volume is also an excellent text, though I have had trouble locating it recently. It treats the issues of reliability and decision analysis in more detail.