TOPIC
This presentation will explore how risk management principles and economic analysis are applied to engineering projects. It introduces a variety of practical risk assessment techniques, following the framework of the international risk management standard. Risk is a critical concept across all engineering projects—whether evaluating the health risks in water treatment, designing flood mitigation strategies to prevent loss of life, or minimizing catastrophic losses from structural failures during earthquakes and storms. Understanding and managing these risks ensures safer, more efficient, and sustainable outcomes. In addition to risk management, the talk will highlight the importance of economic analysis in engineering projects. This includes assessing the costs and benefits of design choices, understanding the trade-offs between safety, quality, and budget, and ensuring the long-term value of infrastructure across its entire life cycle. Such analysis helps balance financial viability with technical performance and sustainability goals. This talk is especially relevant for students aiming for careers in engineering management. However, it also offers valuable insights for professionals in various engineering disciplines, where planning for the full life cycle of products and infrastructure—considering both risks and economic impacts—plays a crucial role.
ABOUT THE LECTURER
Dr Yue Hou is a Senior Lecturer in Transportation Engineering of the Department of Civil Engineering of Faculty of Science and Engineering at Swansea University, UK. Yue’s research interests are focused on the resilient and intelligent transportation infrastructure and materials, physics-informed machine learning in transportation infrastructure engineering, design of sustainable infrastructure and materials using digital twins, and energy harvesting on transportation infrastructures. Yue is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (FICE), a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP), a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET), IEEE Senior Member, and a Chartered Engineer (CEng). Yue’s research in intelligent transportation engineering as PI and Principal Researcher is widely supported by funding agencies in the UK, China, and US, including Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of China, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of USA, etc., leading to production of more than 80 peer-reviewed papers, more than 40 invited presentations (talks) and more than 10 national patents applications.