IMPORTANCE OF RELIABILITY AND ITS ROLES

President and Distinguished Professor, City University of Hong Kong

Way Kuo is President of City University of Hong Kong. He is a Member of US National Academy of Engineering and Academia Sinica in Taiwan, and a Foreign Member of Chinese Academy of Engineering and Russian Academy of Engineering. He is renowned for his work in design for reliability of electronics systems and nuclear energy. He is a pioneer in reliability modeling of electronics at the infant mortality stage and several of his publications have become classics in systems reliability. Co-authoring seven books on reliability, he is Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Reliability. His popular science book Critical Reflections on Nuclear and Renewable Energy has created an impact since its publication in 2013 in Taiwan. The book has been translated into English, Japanese, French and Russian. It has also been published in Hong Kong and Beijing in both traditional and simplified Chinese.

As we live in a highly technological world, surrounded by the Internet, biological technologies, high-speed trains and sophisticated aircraft, new energy sources, new social movement, wide wealth gap between the rich and poor groups and countries, political and religious differences, and so on, we have to face many new challenges which may either improve or threaten our living environment. All these ever-increasing challenges add new risks, and are in the scope of reliability for sustainability. However, the traditional approach of reliability, which looks into the failure free operation of systems, is far too simple, and has to be re-examined.

The various risks and hazards, physical or virtual, are typical reliability problems, and yet go beyond the traditional scope of reliability. They should be dealt with in connection with the society- and environment-related systems we live in. We look forward to seeing more studies in the future in safety and reliability assessments to analyze failure probabilities, determine how potential undesirable events can occur, and develop mitigation measures to minimize the chance of undesired events. The reliability community is best equipped to mitigate the growing risks and vulnerabilities that follow our modern way of living.

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