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Detailed review of: 

1.1   Introduction
1.2   Importance of Risk Analysis
1.3   Elements and Types of Risk Analysis
1.4   Risk Assessment
1.5   Risk Management
1.6   Risk Communication

 2.1   Types of Risk Assessment
 2.2    Risk, Hazard, Performance and Engineering Risk Assessment

 3.1    Introduction
 3.2    Steps in Concluding a Probabilistic Risk Assessment
 3.3    Strength of PRA
 3.4    Scenario and Logic Modeling, Development and Quantification
 3.5    Modeling of Dependent Failures in Risk Assessment                       
 3.6    A Simple Example of PRA

4.1     Introduction
4.2     Active Hardware Performance Assessment
4.3     Statistical Data Analysis for Hardware Items
4.4     Availability as a Measure of Performance for Repairable Hardware Items
4.5     Classical Parameter Estimation of Distribution Models for Performance   
          Assessment of Hardware
4.6     Bayesian Parameters Estimation of Distribution Models for Performance 
          Assessment of Hardware
4.7     Performance of Passive and Some Active Hazard Barriers through Physics and
          Engineering of Failure    Modeling
4.8     Software Performance Assessment
4.9     Human Reliability Analysis
4.10   Expert Opinion in Risk Assessment and Performance Assessment

5.1      Introduction
5.2      Types of Uncertainty
5.3      Measures of Uncertainty
5.4      Uncertainty Propagation Methods
5.5      Comparison of Uncertainty Propagation Methods
5.6      Graphic Representation of Uncertainty

6.1       Introduction
6.2       Importance Ranking in Probabilistic Risk Assessment
6.3       Importance Measures in Success Risk Assessment
6.4       A Comprehensive Example of Importance Measure Application
6.5       Consideration of Uncertainties in Importance Measures Used for Risk-Based
            Ranking
6.6       Uncertainty Importance Measures
6.7       Precursor Analysis

7.1       Introduction
7.2       Representation of Risk Results
7.3       Health and Safety Risk Acceptance Criteria
7.4       Economic Risk and Performance Acceptance Criteria

8.1        Introduction
8.2        Economic Methods in Risk Analysis
8.3        Non-Economic Techniques 

9.1        Introduction
9.2        Forms of Communication
9.3        The Basic Rules of Risk Communication
9.4        Elements of Effective Risk Communication
9.5        Characteristics of an Effective Risk Communication
9.6        Risk Perception

Elements of Probability
Probability Distributions
Basic Characteristics of Random Variables
Estimation and Hypothesis Testing
Frequency Tables and Histograms
Goodness-of-fit Tests
Regression Analysis

This book comes from a professor who has taught the subject of Risk Assessment for past 20 years at the University of Maryland and has been Director of Center for Reliability Engineering, and is Co-Director, Center for

Technology Risk Studies and has published extensively in the area of risk assessment and safety and uncertainty analysis. The author claims that this book has been developed as a Guide for practitioners of risk analysis and assumes no prior knowledge of necessary mathematical or probability foundations. For this reason, he has attempted to provide the basic background required for the book in the Appendix A which runs into 33 pages of the book and thus makes the book self-contained. The author brings into this book his experience of publishing three earlier books, namely, What Every Engineer should know about Reliability and Risk Analysis, published by Marcel Dekker, New York, in 1993 and Reliability Engineering and Risk Analysis: A Practical Guide, coauthored with Mark Kaminsky and Vasiliy Krivtsov also published by Marcel Dekker in 1999 and the third one was Commercial Nuclear Power : Assuring Safety for the Future coauthored with Charles B. Ramsey published in March 1998 by John Wiley & Sons. Besides, the author has contributed considerably to the NUREG reports in formulating procedures and guidelines. Therefore this book contains the most used procedures and practices particularly in conducting probabilistic risk assessments of complex systems such nuclear power plants. One of the special feature of this book is the inclusion of several worked out examples in the text and also a large number of exercises at the end of each chapters. This feature makes it very useful for the undergraduate, graduate students who would like to study the subject of risk modeling, assessment and management as a part of their curricula. In fact , the reviewer noticed that Professor Modarres has brought out a supplementary book, titled, Solutions Manual for Risk Analysis Engineering : Techniques, Tools And Trends which may be useful to students and teachers as well. As is clear from the list of contents that the essential elements of Probabilistic Risk Assessment, namely the modeling, data analysis, quantification, and inferences derived from risk analysis, and acceptance criteria have been extensively covered in the book and that also happens to be the strong point of  the book. Uncertainty analysis, analysis of dependent failures, common cause failures , human reliability analysis and risk communication add to the value of the book.

In short the reviewer would like to recommend this book to all those practicing engineers, students, teachers and researchers who would like to make in depth study of the probabilistic risk assessment and associated problems and are looking for their solutions. This is a most comprehensive treatment of the subject.

K. B. Misra

This review was published in the International Journal of Performability Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 3, July 2007 issue on page 396.