BresDefender: An experimental study on an emergency response measure for levee breaches

The dissertation explores the use of emergency measures, particularly the BresDefender, to prevent or delay levee failure and mitigate the impacts of floods, focusing on the Netherlands' flood protection systems. Levees are vital for protecting low-lying areas, but there's always a risk of failure, leading to significant societal and material...

Measuring the impacts of human and organizational factors on human errors in the Dutch construction industry using structured expert judgement

This study focuses on measuring the influence of critical Human and Organizational Factors (HOFs) on human error occurrence in structural design and construction tasks within the context of the Dutch construction industry. The primary research question addressed in this paper concerns the extent of HOFs’ contribution to human error occurrence...

Automated Vehicles: Changes in expert opinions over time

Innovations in transportation can contribute to reaching relevant societal objectives (e.g. reduce emissions, congestion levels and/or risks). To determine which innovations to stimulate (and which not) it is important for policy makers to assess their effects on beforehand. Expert judgement is an often-used method for this purpose. Although...

Quantifying risks to security of supply for 100% hydrogen in built-environment using Structured Expert Judgement

In this thesis, we explore a proposal from Stedin that advocates heating the city of Stad aan `t Haringvliet with hydrogen rather than natural gas. Switching from natural gas to hydrogen presents plenty of unknown factors which must be properly evaluated for an accurate and realistic risk picture, including the danger of running out of hydrogen....

Dutch electricity spot price forecasting: Two study cases using structured expert judgement

Electricity is a quite unique commodity. Due to the economically non-storable nature of the commodity that electricity is, the constant balance between consumption and production, weather effects, such as temperature, wind speed, solar intensity etc, and the intensity of everyday and business activities, e.g. holi- days, weekends, on- and off...

Is every expert equal?: An analysis of the differences in performance in structured expert judgement

In this thesis the differences in performance scores of experts in the Classical Model for structured expert judgement are analyzed. The underlying assumption in the Classical Model is that variance in performances of experts in a panel is at least partly resultant of the expert's ability to quantify uncertainty. This assumption is tested...

Ice Sheet and Climate Processes Driving the Uncertainty in Projections of Future Sea Level Rise: Findings From a Structured Expert Judgement Approach

The ice sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland present the greatest uncertainty in, and largest potential contribution to, future sea level rise. The uncertainty arises from a paucity of suitable observations covering the full range of ice sheet behaviors, incomplete understanding of the influences of diverse processes, and limitations in...

Decision-Making in Early Internationalization: A Structured Expert Judgement Approach

The aim of this chapter is to show how a structured approach to elicit expert judgement (SEJ) can guide the practice of early internationalization. We applied SEJ to forecast some critical issues upon which an innovative start-up wished to base their decision of whether to expand their initial operations in Poland and Czech Republic to Brazil...

Structured expert judgment to understand the intrinsic vulnerability of traffic networks

The concept of intrinsic vulnerability of a traffic network is defined for the first time in this paper. Intrinsic vulnerability is the susceptibility to incidents characterised by a probability of occurrence in space and time of difficult estimation, which can result in considerable reduction or loss of the system functionality. Given the...

Calibrating experts’ probabilistic assessments for improved probabilistic predictions

Expert judgement is routinely required to inform critically important decisions. While expert judgement can be remarkably useful when data are absent, it can be easily influenced by contextual biases which can lead to poor judgements and subsequently poor decisions. Structured elicitation protocols aim to: (1) guard against biases and provide...

Expert judgement based maintenance decision support method for structures with a long service-life

The optimal moment at which maintenance activities should be performed on structures with long service-life to guarantee the required quality of service is hard to define, due to uncertainties in their deterioration processes. Most of the developed methods and concepts use historical data to predict the deterioration process with deterministic...

Reliability Analysis of Railway Concrete Bridges using Expert Judgment Studies

New railway bridges for high-speed trains are being built in a many countries around the world. In addition to the construction of new bridges, existing bridges are ageing. These two factors make the assessment of railway bridges essential. The bridges are designed considering certain predefined reliability criteria to account for the...

Asset Deterioration: Determining Probabilistic Maintenance Intervals

The municipality of Amsterdam is facing the challenge to deal with uncertainties accompanied with the maintenance planning of maintenance activities on bridges. Long term asset planning (LTAP) has the goal to show the proposed expenditures, capital and operational expenditures (CAPEX and OPEX), for the long term to be able to build up a monetary...

Dwelling as cash machine: An explorative study towards dwelling-generated revenue to reduce housing expenses

Housing affordability is a growing problem in the Netherlands. Approximately 15% of all households has a housing cost overburden rate (i.e. spending more than 40% of the household’s disposable income on the total housing expenses). This research explores a new way to contribute to housing affordability. Dwelling-generated revenue is introduced...

A Tool for Estimating Marine Terminal Dimensions and Costs in a Project’s Feasibility Phase: Taking into account uncertainties

The main objective of this study is the realisation of a computer tool. The function of the tool is to estimate the required dimensions and quantities of essential container, dry and liquid bulk terminal elements, in an early design phase. As well as to give an estimate of the construction costs of these marine terminals. Terminal element...

Climate change in asset management of infrastructure: A risk-based methodology applied to disruption of traffic on road networks due to the flooding of tunnels

This paper presents a risk-based method to quantify climate change effects on road infrastructure, as a support for decision-making on interventions. This can be implemented in climate adaptation plans as an element of asset management. The method is illustrated by a specific case in which traffic on a road network is disrupted by the flooding...

Uncertainty in wind pressure coefficients for low-rise buildings

This paper reports on an analysis of the uncertainty in wind pressure (difference) coefficients, which are assessed on the basis of generic knowledge and experimental data rather than with a specific (wind tunnel) experiment. The analysis is carried out on time averaged pressure coefficients in a specific case, concerning a low-rise building in...