What is Consequence-Based Engineering?

Consequence-based engineering is a new paradigm for seismic risk reduction across regions or systems that incorporates identification of uncertainty in all components of seismic risks modeling and quantifies the risk to societal systems and subsystems enabling policy-makers and decision-makers to ultimately develop risk reduction strategies and implement mitigation actions.

CBE is intended for use by practicing engineers responding to needs of their clients who have a significant vested interest in mitigating seismic risk.  This prototype is new to engineering practice in that mitigation action plans are prescribed in an optimal and streamlined way that minimizes risk across an entire system of interest.  The paradigm is expressed generally to apply to various systems ranging from the built environment across a small community to a national transportation or utility network.  CBE technologies provide an engineer with the tools, approach and application steps needed to communicate possible consequences, to their respective clients in such a manner that the benefits of mitigation actions can be clearly envisioned.

Details about the CBE paradigm can be found in the paper, A New Engineering Paradigm: Consequence-Based Engineering by D.P. Abrams, A.S. Elnashai and J.E. Beavers, 2001, available for download on the MAE Center website.