Preface
The 29th edition of the European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL) is held on 22 - 26 September 2019 in Hannover, Germany. This annual, international conference is run under the auspices of the European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA) to provide a multi-disciplinary forum for the exchange of knowledge and expertise on theories and methods in the field of risk, safety and reliability, with applications to a wide range of industrial, civil and social sectors.
The conference contributes to addressing the strong need of advancements in the fields of reliability, risk and safety assessment and management, to cope with the challenges emerging in today's fast-developing World, where the interplay among technological, societal and financial systems need to be attentively considered. While evolving and revolutionary innovations emerge, such as smart cities and systems or autonomous transportation, new hazards and risks develop, e.g. related to cybersecurity, data management, systems complexity and interdependencies etc. In this challenging scenario, the 29th ESREL conference provides an opportunity to bring together professionals, academics, and individuals from institutions, industries and government agencies around the World to exchange information, share knowledge and discuss advancements in their research and practice.
The rich program of the conference offers 5 keynote speakers of international excellence, and 14 sessions with 10 parallel tracks for a total of 590 papers selected after rigorous peer-review, covering 19 methodological fields and 23 application areas, including (as “popular examples”) system reliability, structural reliability, mathematical methods in reliability and safety, risk assessment, maintenance modelling and applications, human factors and cyber security.
As conference Chairmen, we look forward to the stimulating presentations at ESREL 2019 and the technical discussions which will emerge, and recognize that the success of a flagship conference like ESREL depends on the contributions of many individuals and organizations, who believe in the substantial scientific and technical work that makes up the program. In this view, we thank all the authors who submitted their work to the conference. The quality of submissions this year was again extremely high and we feel gratified by the high quality of the resulting program. The organizing committee would also like to express the deepest appreciation to the technical program committee members and session chairs for their strong support to the conference preparation and development.
We highly appreciate the strong financial support by the German Research Foundation, under Grant No. BE 2570/9-1, and by our industrial sponsors, Großraum-Verkehr Hannover GmbH, exida, and Satodev.
Finally, we thank all of you participants who have come to live the conference: we sincerely hope you find the program both stimulating and enjoyable!
Michael Beer
Enrico Zio