Dragons, black swans and decisions

Since Nassim Taleb coined black swan as an event that occurred as a complete surprise for everybody, the metaphor of the black swan has been applied to a much wider variety of events. Black swan events now comprise events that are a surprise for some but not for others, events that have a low likelihood, events that were not believed to be...

Analysis and influence of uncertainties on the reliability of flood defence systems

Uncertainties are introduced in probabilistic risk analysis when we deal with parameters that are not deterministic (exactly known) but that are unknown instead, hence uncertain. This report describes how uncertainties influence the reliability of flood defence systems. The purpose of the study is to identify all uncertainties that influence the...