This version is available at https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/27910/ Strathprints is designed to allow users to access the research output of the University of Strathclyde. Unless otherwise explicitly stated on the manuscript, Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Please check the manuscript for details of any other licences that may have been applied. You may not engage in further distribution of the material for any profitmaking activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute both the url (https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/) and the content of this paper for research or private study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge.Any correspondence concerning this service should be sent to the AbstractEmpirical Bayes provides one approach to estimating the frequency of rare events as a weighted average of the frequencies of an event and a pool of events. The pool will draw upon, for example, events with similar precursors. The higher the degree of homogeneity of the pool, then the Empirical Bayes estimator will be more accurate. We propose and evaluate a new method using homogenisation factors under the assumption that events are generated from a HomogeneousPoisson Process. The homogenisation factors are scaling constants which can be elicited through structured expert judgement and used to align the frequencies of different events, hence homogenising the pool. The estimation error relative to the homogeneity of the pool is examined theoretically indicating that reduced error is associated with larger pool homogeneity. The effects of misspecified expert assessments of the homogenisation factors are examined theoretically and through simulation experiments. Our results show that the proposed Empirical Bayes method using homogenisation factors is robust under different degrees of misspecification.

Modelling of complex corroding industrial systems is critical to effective inspection and maintenance for assurance of system integrity. Wall thickness and corrosion rate are modelled for multiple dependent corroding components, given observations of minimum wall thickness per component. At each inspection, partial observations of the system are considered. A Bayes Linear approach is adopted simplifying parameter estimation and avoiding often unrealistic distributional assumptions. Key system variances are modelled, making exchangeability assumptions to facilitate analysis for sparse inspection time-series. A utility based criterion is used to assess quality of inspection design and aid decision making. The model is applied to inspection data from pipework networks on a full-scale offshore platform.

An overview of the development of reliability databases and their use in the analysis of failure data. We consider through examples the construction of a reliability database and the implementation of standard methods of analysis. We also discuss common criticisms of the use of reliability databases

We present an overview of the development of reliability databases and their use in the analysis of failure data. We consider through examples the construction of a reliability database and the implementation of standard methods of analysis. We also discuss common criticisms of the use of reliability databases.

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