Civil engineering projects are increasingly complex and are associated with situations where robust decisions are required to be taken. These decisions are made in different stages of civil engineering projects. For example, decision making takes place during feasibility study stage prior to design, procurement, and construction stages in order to determine the viability of project undertaken by an investor.

Decision making in the field of civil engineering often faces the need to deal with hazardous phenomena. They include industrial accidents capable of damaging built property, structural failures, extreme natural phenomena, and human acts affecting security. Proper decisions made by architects and civil engineers may reduce the risk posed by the aforementioned phenomena. Decision making in this field can be facilitated by an application of formal methods, such as methods of multiple criteria decision making or methods of discrete or continuous optimisation.

Most, if not all, decisions are made under uncertainty. The failure probability analysis is an important tool for decision making about the reliability of the structure. Factors relevant to decisions can be identified using the methods of uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of mathematical model outputs. The sensitivity analysis is crucial for building, understanding, and applying complex mathematical models to reliability tasks of bearing structures. Terms like influence, importance ranking, and dominance are all related to uncertainty and sensitivity analysis.

We invite authors to submit original research articles that seek to combine methods of formal decision making and methods developed for assessing risks related to civil engineering infrastructure.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Concepts and techniques which have been developed to both describe and rationalize the process of decision making in civil engineering
• Making a choice among several possible alternatives in different stages of civil engineering projects: selecting building design, selecting appropriate delivery system, selecting appropriate construction method, and so forth
• Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) methods: advances and applications in civil engineering
• Safety and security methods in formal decision making related to civil engineering
• Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of the reliability tasks of civil engineering structures