TUESDAY, March 27, 2012
1:00pm – 3:00pm
KAISER 2020/2030
“The Art and Science of Engineering Modeling”
By Dr. Terje Haukaas
Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering
Abstract
The ultimate goal in engineering is to make decisions about the suitability of candidate designs and actions. To make such decisions, engineers utilize models of various forms and complexity. This presentation aims at providing a somewhat provocative exposure of existing models and how they are employed. Particular emphasis will be placed on uncertainties, and techniques to address these. This is increasingly important in cutting-edge applications where models are employed to make predictions about future phenomena. The speaker’s background is in the “reliability community,” which has tended to ask big-picture questions such as “How Safe is Safe Enough?” Historical lines will be drawn up to present-day research to expose how this question has been answered in different times. Examples will be drawn from structural engineering, where a broadening of the basis for design decisions is taking place. The classical capacity-demand considerations for structural components is being amended to explicitly include the cost of damage, environmental concerns, and other impacts away from the building site. This motivates this presentation of new models and modelling techniques to foster this change.
Bio
Dr. Terje Haukaas was accredited Journeyman of Carpentry in 1987 and Master Builder in 1992. He received the Sivilingeniør degree from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 1996 and continued to work in the city of Trondheim on several large-scale engineering projects, including a floating submerged tunnel. As a 1998 Fulbright Fellow he pursued studies at the University of California at Berkeley where he received a Master’s degree in 1999 and a PhD degree in 2003. He then joined UBC where he conducts research on probabilistic modeling and analysis in civil engineering. Dr. Haukaas serves as Associate Editor for the ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering and he is the Chairman of the upcoming ICASP 12 conference in Vancouver. He is active member in several scholarly committees.
Coffee, Cookies and Refreshments will be served