Rare Event Analysis Considering Data and Model Uncertainty

Abstract

In risk analysis of rare events, there is a need to adopt data from different sources with varying levels of detail (e.g., local, regional, categorical data). Therefore, it is very important to identify, understand, and incorporate the uncertainty that accompanies the data. Hierarchical Bayesian analysis (HBA) addresses uncertainty among the aggregated data for each event through generating an informative prior distribution for the event's parameter of interest. The Bayesian network (BN) approach is used to model accident causation. BN enables both inductive and abductive reasoning, which helps to better understand and minimize model uncertainty. In this work, the methodology is proposed to integrate BN with HBA to model rare events, considering both data and model uncertainty. HBA considers data uncertainty, while BN uses an adaptive model to better represent and manage model uncertainty. Application of the proposed methodology is demonstrated using three types of offshore accidents. The proposed methodology provides a way to develop a dynamic risk analysis approach to rare events.