The idea behind this special supplement came out of discussions with the Editor, Dr. Michael McCarthy, about the need to present some recent advances in the area of risk-based and robust design. We felt, and still feel, that there is an ever increasing need to design mechanical and structural systems that are risk tolerant and robust. It was our belief that it would be useful if, by way of a de...

Structural failures in recent earthquakes and hurricanes have exposed the weakness of current design procedures and shown the need for new concepts and methodologies for building performance evaluation and design. A central issue is proper consideration and treatment of the large uncertainty in the loadings and the complex building behavior in the nonlinear range in the evaluation and design pr...