The technological age has seen a number of catastrophic and preventable failures - from buildings and bridges to space and launch vehicles, from chemical factories to nuclear power plants, from ships to airplanes, and from trains to automobiles. Often the root cause can be traced to design and engineering that did not appropriately consider safety as a factor. The ideas, methods, and case studies of this book are at the nexus of probabilistic risk assessment and decision analysis. This book melds these two technologies into a method of incorporating safety into a system or product from the beginning of its development.

Content includes: Choosing safety: an overview -- Safety, risk, and hazard concepts -- Probabilistic risk assessment concepts and methods -- Procedures for making safety-related decisions -- Principles of risk communication within a project -- The blade-trade case study -- Choosing among space shuttle auxiliary power unit safety improvement strategies -- The decision to launch the cassini spacecraft -- Mars micro-meteorology (micro-met) stations -- Choosing the best severe accident management strategy -- Choosing safety: the final analysis.