Date: 24 June, 2021, 13-14 hrs (CET).
Extreme events are usually far away in our minds. If they occur, nevertheless, they often hit us unexpectedly. When single events with severe consequences for the environment and people occur, most people perceive them as extreme.
On the other hand, anyone hardly cares about a large number of smaller events over a longer period of time, whose combined impact is of similar magnitude.
Particularly in large construction projects, the occurrence of unexpected, extreme events, such as natural hazards, could result to e.g. the collapse of a bridge or a fire in a tunnel quite often and this causes a shock effect, also perceived by the public. Moreover, the overrun of costs and construction time, caused by unknown risks, could lead to fear and blame. In this presentation, Konrad Bergmeister shows a possible way on how such unknown risks, but also unknown opportunities can be countered. Based on scientific principles and extensive practical experience, he addresses a structured holistic opportunity-risk management for large projects. In his Life-Talk, the issue of the Corona Pandemic is also addressed from the perspective of risk-reward management.
So dear dear ladies and gentlemen here up to france i am pleased to welcome you to this webinar about risk management of large scale projects my name is alfred strauss and i’m from the university of natural resources and life sciences and i’m heading the yapsichia austrian group
I have the honor to moderate this webinar together with uh driving postology from our university of darmstadt so we are the webinar is organized by the international association for bridge and structural engineering and it is organized together with the apsa group the national group of austria with my co-chairs with
Dr alice forbacher from ied he’s participating today in the beginning and dr roman gaya from so we’ll hand over to evie for the mission for the channel Hello for me as well i don’t say good afternoon because i’m hoping that you’re watching us from all over the world i will just say a few words on ayap and the iaps’s mission is to exchange knowledge and advance the practice of structural engineering worldwide and this is mainly accomplished through
The structural engineering international journal of iops they upset bulletins the structural engineering documents the case studies documents and the guidelines and of course through the conferences and the upcoming conferences of ayapste are going to be held the first one again in september and then further on in prague
In may 2022 and then the next one in 2022 is inaudible please visit the iapza website if you would like to get further information on the conferences i would like to inform you that this session is being recorded you might be probably probably aware of that and this also goes live on facebook
And afterwards it will be uploaded to the e-learning platform of them and now going to our webinar today we are asking you to place your questions in the q a section of this room and after professor buckmeister’s talk is over he will coordinate the discussion
So fit back to you thank you very much so it’s a great pleasure for us for today’s webinar about the risk management of large scale projects to have professor bergmeister here as a speaker professor bergmaster’s head of the institute of structural engineering at the university of natural resources from the same university as
I am from and his practical as well as scientific excellence has been recognized already by a lot of doctorates in the walls what we also have to mention he is editor of the tone calendar of tony steilbert and so these are only one small things in his bigger spectrum of excellence
He’s also responsible for landing and construction of large structures like the venom base tunnel and the brella motor hawaii motorway and now he’s also involved in a lot of scientific projects and practical projects so um he also what is very important to remember he is a member of the
Berlin brandenburg academy of science a member of the german academy academy of science in boldina and member of the scientific board of the helmholtz center post in boston he is holds also already three honorary doctorates so it is a very impressive trend yeah uh dear professor dogma city cornered
We are happy to have you here for today we’re looking forward for your presentation and that you ask we would like to ask to share with us your experience and your ideas and our mission i’d like to ask you to give us your speech please hey you are on mute please
So now okay there mr chairman there alfred if he respected members of the panel risk management of large projects leads immediately to some modest behavior therefore i would like to outline in the next half an hour approximately a certain risk which may occur during the planning and the realization phase of infrastructures
The opportunities as well and i feel it is very important that we see always both sides uh on the picture then i would like to concentrate my presentation specifically the so-called unknown unknowns which are related to unexpected extreme events i will try to present special methods which have been
Developed in the past year and finally conclude my presentation approximately 25 to 30 minutes i wrote a book regarding these issues unfortunately only in german it is available now since a couple of months and it was produced by the editor ernst young and spencer from berlin
Now going a little bit more into detail if when we are talking about extreme events then as a human being we are always trying not to think too much on such extreme normally in our behavior we are relating extreme events to some negative issues there is one other almost a psychological issue happen
When a single severe events occur then we are perceiving that is a very extreme events if a huge number of small events occur over a certain period of time then we are not cared about this might be happened if you if you are thinking on some street accidents if if one thing
Accident occurs with more than 100 deaths then we are talking about that we are trying to search about this courses and so on but if one events uh of street accidents are happening during a whole year they may then we do not normally care about then there is another issue which is
Related um to the so-called unknown opportunities there are not only risks there are also a lot of opportunities happening in the next present the next couple of minutes i would like to outline a little bit the different uh situations so normally we are talking about risk but on the same hand
Side we have other chances which have to be identified which have to be in somehow followed and we have to do something with them now feature the italian philosopher uh almost more than two thousand years ago or ago stated how much did we really learn from the past
And he says that history is the only teacher of our life and that means that we have to see if we are able through a process and i would like to outline now this process a little bit if you are able to identify to define some areas which might
Create in the next steps some risk or some opportunities this is the scope of the following presentation we are used and we are trained as a civil engineer for a certain let’s call them probability based acceptable risk procedure dealing with stresses with actions and dealing with resistance
And we found it was josefa lint who published the first paper on that he found a certain safety merchant expressed in abello for example 4.7 referred a probability to a probability of failure to one uh to the power uh to ten to the power of minus six
One event of uh in a period of one year out of one million of projects or possible structural failures and so on so this is a very low margin of acceptable risk this is very well known for structural design for structural purpose on the other hand side we are accepting
Almost on a daily basis that approximately 1.5 times 10 to the power of minus five of street accident might be happening on european highways on european streets and in the past periods we concentrated not only our research but also our interest to the so-called life cycle management
And now it comes into the discussion a second issue which is the time every accepted risk must be related to a certain period of time certainly during a construction we have a very clear time step which is the construction period or during the planning process we know
That we are referring to the planning time about operational in the operational phase we have to refer everything to the so-called operational time which might be 50 years 100 years or also more for certain buildings and infrastructures now today we want to talk a little bit about extreme events
And extreme events are not easy describable with some statistical distributions so this figure this scheme tells us a little bit that the extreme events can be also described as the so-called fat tales they are occurring uh very very uh in a huge extreme impact but the time
Period can be very long so that means the probability of occurrence will be very very low and this creates us also from let’s call them a statistical state point of view from an engineering point of view also some difficulties it is known as the fat tail in the statistics
Now the actual risk management is based on the identification and on the evaluation of certain risks and finally we are taking some measures in order to reduce the impact and in order to keep the possible impact under a certain value in the albus we are always talking about
The risk and the so-called chances the positive issues on the actual risk management is the following that we are able uh to identify and to quantify the impact but we are not able through the actual procedures to in some how to identify or to define also the impact
In terms of costs in terms of times of the so-called extreme unforeseen events and finally the society the press and also individuals are after if something occurs always on the search for some guilty party somebody else has to be guilty so this makes the problem uh quite opportune and therefore we have we
Should try now this is the scope of the presentation in somehow to describe this behavior the extreme events occur as i told you their time they are not time depending they are not periodically uh coming up they are unforeseen so that means that something is happening which we don’t know
We are talking about extreme events we are talking about unknown impact and uh till now we learned that we are not able to determine the so-called extreme events and with unknown impacts on a statistical basis this is that but what we learned till now now are there any methods
Or approaches around which can be theoretically speaking used we are talking about interdisciplinary methods and they have been used very often in psychology in social sciences economical sciences we know the statistical methods we are using the statistical methods in order to figure out a certain probability of occurrence
And i developed i tried to develop a so-called phenomenological approach which we which will be described immediately now in order to to create a little bit more of order within the whole risk discussion i try to categorize the whole risks in terms of the so-called known risks so risk and opportunities which
Are known based on the actual information what we have then the second category is take so-called quantifiable risk and identified risk the third category is the quantifiable but very difficult identifiable default one i did not identify final risk and finally i identify i try to define three more
Categories the first four have been already known three more categories which are related to human induced events net events which are induced by nature by technology by the economy and in terms of the economy i would like to remember of the impact what the world got in 2008 when an american bank
Failed so this was an impact which was unforeseen uh which had a huge impact not only national right but it had an impact on a worldwide level or if you are talking about i mean health we got an impact uh by the last enemy which was never foreseen which was
Not uh describable before we had this um big impact and now we know we know a little bit more there have been only one or two countries in the world a worldwide level who have been at least a little bit prepared by having certain procedure if a certain pandemic occurs
Finally the last class the last category is the combination of a different let’s call them risk a so-called chain situation chain events i give you now in the following a couple of examples for that before we’re going into the detail i would like to uh to
Refer to you a little bit what we are doing at the moment we are uh identifying the risk by normally or within a so-called delphi process trying to ask experts getting the expert opinions quantifying the resistance we are nothing else as we are using a product by the probability of occurrence times the
Impact of a certain risk of a certain opportunity gives us a certain amount of euros of dollars which have to be resolved if a certain risk occurs so we’re trying to cover a so-called probability-based risk with a certain amount of financial guarantees nothing more nonetheless now we are aggregating the individual risk
If there are a lot independent risk so this is always a question is that is real independent or not but we are assuming that they are independent otherwise we have to use a correlation matrix and we are trying uh to develop some measures in order to reduce the impact of the risk
This is the actual procedure now are we able in somehow uh to use the existing methodologies this is the question uh the possible quantitative methods are already known this is the variance method the monte carlo metals uh some sampling methods and so on but finally if
We are using a monte carlo method uh figuring out let’s say uh the value at risk percentage then we have to interpret that and to communicate now in order to summarize that again a little bit we are identifying the risk and the opportunities i feel sorry about the spelling errors
We are using the products over here we are aggregating the individual risk and finally we are presenting that we can be presented in a very simplified matrix three pi by three or nine by nine identifying different categories in terms of probability of occurrence and in terms of financial code
This is actually what we know already now for the for the unknown risks there are no procedures around what we did over here was uh through the phd thesis of alexis stamperopolis who finished his phd now almost 80 years ago he worked out the most convenient statistical function
For the aggregation of a lot of different risks for large scale projects this has been worked out by alexios and he came up with a so-called beta function so the beta distribution is the most appropriate one in order to describe the aggregation of risk for large scale projects this is an additional information
What i’ll be doing with that we are trying to identify actually finally by using the so-called lorenz curve a certain value at risk value the value of risk can be referred to as 50 or an 80 percent sorry the ship is 50 an 80 or a 50 percentage and this is actually
Something which has to be decided finally by the owners by the project managed by project drivers if they want to cover with the actual uh statistically derived financial let’s say cover 50 of the probability or 80 percent i wrote in my book that specifically for publicly owned large-scale projects they are the
Tendency is to cover approximately 50 to 70 percent privately owned uh very complex project and complex projects can be also small projects the tendency is going to a higher value from approximately 80 to 95 of the value at risk now the new approach is referring the so-called phenomena phenomenological approach is doing something
Different if you have over here the presence then we are trying to look back in the past trying to figure out what was happened in the past for example if a natural hazard has been happen in the past 100 years in a certain area of our project large scale projects are
Projects which are huge in terms of complexity in terms of development in terms of their length or of their height or of their costs now you can try to figure out from the past certain phenomenas which finally they’re leading to a certain event and we are trying to use that information
Adding uh to that information some actual monitoring uh trying to integrate probably some simulation results and trying to develop a prognosis for the future this is the concept so the concept uses past experiences for in a technical term we would say there is an approach past informations enriched with some actual monitoring
With some measurements which are taking uh certainly always on some very amusement different key elements which are derived from past events and then they are trying to learn from the history and to the provinces for the future now for the three extreme risk categories there are certain uh different types the
First one is the so-called unknown human induced risk the sec the second one is the unknown risk induced by nature sorry is there any question this is so i will response to the uh to the answer which i read over there the before do performance based design a specific way to address
This during the design phase yes the performance based design uh would include and this is also a big advantage for the performance performance-based design they can include and should include not only certain different risk in terms of the environment in terms of the logistics in terms of the construction and realization phase but
It should include also the so-called unknown extreme possible events thanks for the question so the idea is now to categorize as i told you already before the whole package of unknown risk into three different topics into three different top thematics the first one actually is something
Which is related and you see it only again this is already a picture of what you saw now we are i’m starting with the first example for the so-called human induced uh event we remember 20 years ago on the 11th of september a terrorist attacks occurred on the tower of new
York from the world trade center and what we really learned was that finally the building and the whole structure have been properly built and designed but it has not been including or included it and it couldn’t include such a major terrorist attack or such a major event
What we can learn out of such a study is nothing else that there was also a certain chain of different failures for example first of all a part of the tower collapsed then some fire came in and finally the the fire at the high temperature reduced the steel resistance of the
Main structure and finally this lead lead to the hole to the collapse of the flows and the collapse of the outer of the perimeter columns as well the whole structure columns now uh what we learned out of this example was that we need a certain robustness robustness was developed later on and
Robustness is a topic which must be uh specifically for structures infrastructures and i call them complex buildings must be included on a design that is in the design phase so this is a something what we learn the second issue the technology induced risk we are running quite often such problems
And we don’t know that corrosion environmental impact sometimes also aging of the material and so on is going on our structure specifically in europe f h of t existing structures of more than 50 years they have been built more than 50 years ago now uh only a few of those structures
Have been designed in order to get a certain robustness and i’m not going into detail of this specific topic but i would like to figure out only that the so-called technologically extreme events are very often related to or some unknown situations during the design phase probably also some uh not
Or some neglection of uh possible influences or impacts and finally also some not respected and non-included extreme possible extreme events during the realization phases robustness is again a big issue it’s the third possible extreme event i would like to mention the fukushima earthquake now 10 years ago and this was certainly
A nature induced extreme event but finally that extreme event was not only one he went this was a chain of various different events and if we go a little bit into detail then we see uh without going too much into detail but i would like to point out first
Some other issue then the earthquake with a certain magnitude of 8.9 actually had an impact on the nuclear power plant first of all on uh entire route over here on the tsunami and later on on the nuclear power plant so based on the research done by uh proske published in 2018
The frequency of a possible damage for nuclear power plant is approximately 10 to the power of -3 so that means one event occurs on a worldwide level one times per year this is uh not very low but if we look to the chain of the extreme events then
An earthquake occurred with a high magnitude and this is happening i wouldn’t say often but this happened on a worldwide level the earthquake induced a certain tsunami also this is happening and finally a tsunami ended up in a nuclear accident where a lot of people have been killed and so on
The only nation what we can take is we are we can try to interrupt the chain of possible events so the sequence of possible extreme events and this have to be studied carefully there have been different small issues which are very very interesting to identify to analyze them
The pumps that kept their actor cool broke down that have that do not have been a redundant pump system available then for a whole day the workers tried to keep their act to school um i mean we had a similar situation also very close by in the czech republic
Uh another uh 20 years ago and the overheated system finally exploded and this leads to the radiation and finally to approximately 20 000 fatalities and more than 180 000 people which have been killed obviously which have been displaced which had to be displaced so 20 000 fatalities
Now what we learned by analyzing this extreme event is that we need something to interrupt the so-called chain of extreme events and this is something which is very important now in the literature there have been some interesting people stein miller nicolas stalin i met him several times in order to reflect with him
The approach what i was now a little bit trying to have to develop uh also uh professor sunit uh from eph and the bfl from luzan from switzerland he came up with the dragon the red dragon and nikolas nassim uh developed the idea of the black swing so
There are only description of such big events it was actually sonnet who developed the exponential function as a possible description of extreme events um he simulated certain extreme events and he came up using some exponential function and he was also quite satisfied that he was able at least in some how to identify
With by using a statistical function the extreme events i was using a different approach and i need another five minutes and i’m done how such an event can be described the scope and the idea is now the following we want to identify also the unknown risk and opportunities
We want to search in the past and the new approach is nothing else is searching in the past studying carefully what was happened by similar projects by in the surrounding areas and so on applying certain measurements based on key factors and developing an idea how such unforeseen extreme events in the
Future can be or promoted in terms of opportunities or reduced when some unforeseen risk would be happen this is the scope the normal projects are quite simple and the impact of a very extreme event on a normal project probably might not be so intensive as it is for a large scale project since
The complexity the volatility is increasing exponentially and this makes the life so difficult when we are talking about a large scale projects then there is another issue which is related to fear uh we experienced that also during our past during the past family and we figured out that
Fear was something which is uh um which is something which is cannot be uh very much uh let’s say limited that almost the whole world experienced now depending and there is still some fear around in terms of are we able through the vaccination to protect ourselves martina
A year ago and she said the theory means even afterwards invisible everywhere at all times this is something which has to be not to underestimated and therefore we have not only this is now the procedural way how we can probably try to identify some unforeseen events we have to observe
The natural past events the environment the oils and extreme world events the processes which are going on through the digitalization zone observation of anonymous developing scenarios by using expert systems computer simulation experts operational research and so on and finally trying to identify the so-called catalytic elements we normally call that key performance
Indicator in order to use a word which is already known in the civilizational world identification parameters and this the so-called catalytic elements they are based on historical experience they can be figured out through the simulations and finally we are defining or describing a possible extreme scenario and we will develop
Different scenarios and trying to identify key parameters which can be observed by going so in that directions we are applying a periodic monitoring for those key parameters and and this is very important we have to discuss and we have to reflect that also with experts for example or also with the project responsiveness
Itself this is very important otherwise we will not be able uh to to study that carefully since we need in any case the interaction with the actual project manager talking about logical projects so periodic monitoring reflection and communication and finally uh defining some preventive measures based on the studies based on
Uh the monitoring and so on and we have to provide equipment and human resources boats this is a very important issue let’s think for a second uh to the chain invent in japan uh now exactly 11 years ago on the 11th of uh 10 years ago on the 11th march of 2011.
In order to prevent such a chain event We need some some measures which can be applied immediately we need some information from the monitoring and we need both equipment and human resources now in terms of costs i try to develop a procedure which is also published in the book by saying we need for a certain project not only uh
They developed the analysis of the so-called basic costs and the analysis of the so-called identifiable and quantified risks there is a certain amount of acceptable risk we are accepting that and i introduced my presentation with the acceptable risk but we have to include also a certain percentage
On the basis of the basic costs which are which are in a percentage of up to 11 i analyzed different projects uh i did a back analysis of the past projects and i came up with some procedure in terms of complexity of the structure in terms of the
Construction in the planning period in terms of possible formation of chains of events and certainly there are different values referred to the different time steps of the planning and construction on realization phases so the maximum amount is 11 the minimum amount is 3 there is a range between 3 and 11 of
Costs which should be foreseen in the forecast for large-scale projects and in order to conclude my presentation we need tolerance the tolerance between the different people this is an example where i was responsible for years ago we had a site work going on with 11 different languages or you need also trust and
Very often communication which allows people which are not talking which they cannot talk since there are there is a lot of rumors around they have to trust each other and they have to find a way how to communicate together and finally we need courage in order to accept
Still some risk and some opportunities and i would like to thank you so much and then i’m open for the uh ongoing discussion so i’m professor master connor thank you very much for the very interesting uh i think it’s a very trendy topic we are we’ll move on to the discussion so
The discussion in the chat or are welcome to write us here with your questions here we are i think they will come maya start with the first question so with respect to the so did these are now the unknowns knowns the risks and so on do you have a specific idea about
Education programs how we how universities or even schools or and so on should already teach your future generation such topics so thank you so much alpha this is a very interesting issue um if you remember before 2008 in economical science they have been not so aware about possible unforeseen extreme financial
Events after the failure of the lehman brother bank a lot of new topics came in in the study program of the economic science now we experienced in the past year and we don’t know exactly the reason that a lot of additional extreme events came in
If you think only for example on our on the digitalization process and so i’m sure that we should include in the education specifically in the master program some dedicated hours to uh first of all to present a model to present different approaches which can be used secondly to discuss with the
Ongoing responsibilities engineers and so on these topics and third issue we should experience that also by training that means working with students together and work out programs using a project trying to identify some risk trying to identify uh some possible measures which kind of key identification factors could be used
And so on and this helps a lot in order to be aware about such a unforeseen event what do you think about databases using databases can they help in particular to understand the specific processes and so on and what do you what is your opinion about such
Such an approach now this is a another very very important issue databases are very helpful but they are only helpful if the individual events are described very well so that means that we need the background the constraints some elements which led to that specific event and second issue what have been done
Afterwards if we are thinking on the collapse of a bridge then we are trying to adapt certain measures like studying the robustness promoting integral structures and so on and that issues should be integrated in the data bank and they could be used in the future by applying uh let’s say artificial intelligence algorithm
In order to train a data bank and to figure out from the data bank exactly that historical events what we need in order to do a prognosis for the unforeseen events thank you thank you very much it seems that we don’t have any questions yet please feel free to ask ah yes
Okay there is one question how to estimate the level of robustness needed in the structural design i was also i aiming to ask about robustness i mean robustness is a webinar on its own but uh okay so sorry i addressed the second question instead don’t worry if i write already both
Questions so i i will respond the second question to come back to the first one in terms of robustness i mean alfred knows that very well there exists a lot of different approaches but till now there is in the code there is not an accepted approach
Available till now what we are trying to do is actually we are trying to see if a certain in a certain structure if one let’s say the most critical member fails then the structure must keep still safe so the structure should not fail and should not call it
And this is a very rough description uh how we try to achieve robustness but robustness must be not only referred to the so-called structure itself but the robustness is also something which is uh going into resilience if you are thinking on a corridor basis where we have uh
Some some bridges some tunnels and so on if a train goes from a bridge to a tunnel and afterwards again to another bridge then you have a chain of individual structures and for the corridor it is important to have a certain resilience in or if a certain
Element of a structure fails if you have to close the corridor then you have you should have a bypass or at least a possibility that the train can bypass the failed situation or the cars can bypass this is an issue which is uh very much important i don’t know
Alfred if you want to add something no i think you already interest this question very well so there are a lot of different variations of and formats for the robustness but but still it is not an um full determined value how you should define the robustness level
In the second question related to social factors i would like to thank mr hashim that he presented this question this is such an important issue the social and the psychological behavior of human beings is very important it must be included in that in the in that in the proposal in the project i
Included that in terms of uh let’s say of uh there are a lot of different individual parameters or let’s call them elements which are governing the possible prognosis for the future and the governing factors might be uh how robust is the structure what will be the behavior of the people involved
In the immediate reaction uh what about the social behavior and the psychological behavior let’s say three hours six hours nine hours later of the event since this is another important issue uh if you are able not only to find uh let’s say uh uh some some safe bypass or some
Other measure which might be applied but also the human behavior is quite important so this is one aspect which should be really reflected and we should also include it in our study programs for how we behave what can we do with fear what can we do with the social specs
Even next thank you very much for the answering and next question are there contractors engineers today taking into a consideration the risk that could face um thank you so much uh for this uh question um i can tell you only that the european community the european commission which is uh
Observing the trans-european network projects are aware of these issues and i’m sharing a group called the chefs of the long tons and we are we face they have been facing also this problem since they are not recognized still now in codes or in guidelines there are now some discussions going on
In the so-called historic countries in europe which have been promoting tunnels and so on to include that issues as well since specifically in tunneling there are a lot of unknown unknowns you cannot inspect the geology before you excavate a tunnel and therefore this is a big issue and
I would say the public administration but specifically also the european uh main drivers of the large-scale projects are aware of this topic and i’m sure then that in a couple of years we have and we will include that also in our guidelines and in our procedures
Thank you very much maybe one hour one one more question from my side with respect to the risk management you have different professions there different groups some different uh education levels and you are just in your projects you were just responsible for this risk management so what
System or what structure did you use in order to make all the groups of our specific risk situations okay matter this is very complex i would i would like to answer that with one word modesty and be tolerant to every opinion and try to respect it thank you very much yes so
Um at the moment uh there are not any more questions but i think nevertheless we can connect the questions and uh we will then uh email who i will contact you and professor blackmaster think you will be happy always to answer to to just respond to these questions so then we will say
Again thank you very much for this very interesting presentation thank you also for supporting us in this webinar to the organizers i would also say thank you for the members and for the participants participating in this webinar today and we will close here and it’s over to evie but she would also
Say some words thank you also from my side i really enjoyed this presentation and particularly it’s interdisciplinary correlation that’s about fear and knowledge i think this is the key in our let’s say also in our discipline the more we know the lesson so thank you very much and
Hope to see you all soon again and yeah please so connor thank you very much and i hope to see each other in the next webinar or the next activity ups or other activities i wish all all of you a good remaining week and those are good summer time
And he’s this forward to see you in september thank you the same to you good luck to everybody good luck thanks a lot see you today