CIA eConcrete - Extreme Events and Black Swans

In order to ensure maximum safety and durability of concrete structures, compliance, understanding and knowledge is essential to deliver best practice outcomes. Building design codes are largely based on the statistical analysis of expected variation in materials and loads, to arrive at procedures that will ensure a very low risk of failure under the greatest expected loads and most severe expected conditions. Recent “Safety in Design” legislation on the other hand requires that all risks must be removed or minimised “so far as is reasonably practicable”. In this presentation Doug Jenkins will provide an overview of current code requirements, including inconsistencies between the standard limit state design approach and legal requirements, and discuss ways in which structures can be designed and detailed to cope with unexpected extreme events without collapse.