PROBABILISTIC CONDITION CHARACTERISATION OF COASTAL STRUCTURES USING IMPRECISE INFORMATION

This paper builds on previous work by Dawson and Hall (2001) which proposed new probabilistic and imprecise techniques for condition characterisation of coastal defences. A fragility function is used to provide a concise probabilistic description of structural performance. However, frequently the information needed to build a fragility function is not in a format directly applicable to probabilistic analysis. A method has been developed that can use imprecise information in probabilistic reliability analysis to generate imprecise assessments of the conditional probability of defence failure. This method is extended to demonstrate how changes in the proneness to failure can be monitored using information from defence inspections and model analysis.