Top experts exchange views on reliability
Kenix Wong
The 11th International Conference on Mathematical Methods in Reliability (MMR) is being held from 3 to 7 June at City University of Hong Kong (CityU).
Six distinguished professors are delivering keynote speeches on topics in reliability modelling and analysis at this major international forum, which has attracted over 300 participants from around the world.
At the opening ceremony were Professor Way Kuo, CityU President and General Chair of MMR 2019; Professor Alex Jen Kwan-yue, CityU Provost; Professor Lu Jian, Vice-President (Research and Technology); Professor Nozer Singpurwalla and Professor Xie Min, Organising Chairs of MMR 2019.
In his address, Professor Kuo extended a warm welcome and highlighted the importance of reliability to aspects of our lives and academic analysis. He stressed that the conference served as a forum for presenting the latest advances in the mathematical theory of reliability and risk management as well as their applications.
In the first keynote speech, Professor Tim Bedford from the University of Strathclyde in Scotland discussed the requisite reliability modelling in complex engineered systems. He touched on examples from work carried out at the University of Strathclyde including power stations, wind farms and electricity networks.
The second keynote, delivered by Professor Thomas A. Mazzuchi from George Washington University in the US, explored the use of expert judgment in risk analysis and offered an overview of some of the main themes in the literature.
A postgraduate maintenance programme was discussed in the third keynote, given by Professor D.N.P. (Pra) Murthy from the University of Queensland in Australia, and challenges in modelling complex systems was the focus of the fourth keynote, which was given by Professor Kishor S. Trivedi from Duke University in the US, and covered reliability and availability assurance methods based on probabilistic models.
Professor Masaaki Kijima from Hiroshima University in Japan gave a talk on the transition from mathematical reliability to financial engineering at the fifth keynote. He revealed some reliability models that allowed repairs to be more general and discussed the associated stochastic processes.
The final keynote, delivered by Professor Zhu Xiaoyan from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, centred on the two-stage stochastic programming approach for combined redundancy allocation and preventive maintenance planning under uncertain future usages.
The MMR conferences, which have been organised once every 2 to 3 years since 1997, bring together the best international experts in the field, both from academia and industrial sectors such as energy, aeronautics, automotive and telecommunications.