Abstract
The design of complex artifacts, for example civil structural and infrastructural systems, is based on the premise that their performance can be predicted and evaluated with sufficient confidence for the engineers, clients and other stakeholders jointly to make intelligent and informed decisions. This requires a shift away from current prescriptive codes, which tend to be implicitly conservative and do not properly account for the consequences of damage or failure of an artifact, and toward a design process and design codes more firmly rooted in the realistic prediction of the probabilities of damage and failure, and the associated consequences. There is also a need for a risk-based design process and code that account in a normative and comprehensive way for the consequences associated to risks. This chapter proposes a capability approach to design, herein called capability-based design. We argue that capabilities provide the requisite framework for conceptualizing consequences in risk assessment, evaluation, and management. Finally, a capability approach to design offers concrete guidance to engineers making design choices and balancing competing design constraints.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported primarily by the Science, Technology, and Society Program of the National Science Foundation Grant (STS 0926025). Opinions and findings presented are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsor.
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Murphy, C., Gardoni, P. (2012). Design, Risk and Capabilities. In: Oosterlaken, I., van den Hoven, J. (eds) The Capability Approach, Technology and Design. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3879-9_10
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