Unresolved Problems in Geotechnical Risk and Reliability

The geotechnical engineering and research communities have made significant progress in understanding how concepts of probabilistically based reliability analysis interact with the unique features of the geotechnical environment and in developing procedures to apply probabilistic methods to practical geotechnical problems. This conference presents evidence of both the scope of current activities and the success of recent applications. However, many issues remain unresolved. This paper identifies ten problems, issues, or areas of activity in which major questions are still open. It is to be hoped that they will form the agenda for the next generation of research and development at the interface of two disciplines that address uncertainty every day – geotechnical engineering and reliability analysis.