• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.270-282
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• 2001

A simple measure of uncertainty importance based on normalized metric distance to quantify the entire change of cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) has been developed for use in probability safety assessments (PSAs). The metric distance measure developed in this study reflects the relative impact of distributional changes of inputs on the change of an output distribution, white most of the existing uncertainty importance measures reflect the magnitude of relative contribution of input uncertainties to the output uncertainty. Normalization is made to make the metric distance measure a dimensionless quantity. The present measure has been evaluated analytically for various analytical distributions to examine its characteristics. To illustrate the applicability and strength of the present measure, two examples are provided. The first example is an application of the present measure to a typical problem of a system fault tree analysis and the second one is for a hypothetical non-linear model. Comparisons of the present result with those obtained by existing uncertainty importance measures show that the metric distance measure is a useful tool to express the measure of uncertainty importance in terms of the relative impact of distributional changes of inputs on the change of an output distribution.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1996.11a
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• pp.415-420
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• 1996

The main objective of the present study is to propose a new measure of uncertainty importance based on distributional sensitivity analysis. The new measure is developed to utilize a metric distance obtained from cumulative distribution functions (cdfs). The measure is evaluated for two cases: one is a cdf given by a known analytical distribution and the other given by an empirical distribution generated by a crude Monte Carlo simulation. To study its applicability, the present measure has been applied to two different cases. The results are compared with those of existing three methods. The present approach is a useful measure of uncertainty importance which is based on cdfs. This method is simple and easy to calculate uncertainty importance without any complex process. On the basis of the results obtained in the present work, the present method is recommended to be used as a tool for the analysis of uncertainty importance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 1990.04a
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• pp.272-288
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• 1990

The uncertainty quantification process in probabilistic Risk Assessment usually involves a specification of the uncertainty in the input data and the propagation of this uncertainty to the final risk results. The distributional sensitivity analysis is to study the impact of the various assumptions made during the quantification of input parameter uncertainties on the final output uncertainty. The uncertainty importance of input parameters, in this case, should reflect the degree of changes in the whole output distribution and not just in a point estimate value. A measure of the uncertainty importance is proposed in the present paper. The measure is called the distributional sensitivity measure(DSM) and explicitly derived from the definition of the Kullback's discrimination information. The DSM is applied to three typical discrimination information. The DSM is applied to three typical cases of input distributional changes: 1) Uncertainty is completely eliminated, 2) Uncertainty range is increased by a factor of 10, and 3) Type of distribution is changed. For all three cases of application, the DSM-based importance ranking agrees very well with the observed changes of output distribution while other statistical parameters are shown to be insensitive.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.157-168
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• 2022

A moment-independent importance measure analysis approach was introduced to quantify the effects of structural uncertainty parameters on probabilistic seismic demands of simply supported girder bridges. Based on the probability distributions of main uncertainty parameters in bridges, conditional and unconditional bridge samples were constructed with Monte-Carlo sampling and analyzed in the OpenSees platform with a series of real seismic ground motion records. Conditional and unconditional probability density functions were developed using kernel density estimation with the results of nonlinear time history analysis of the bridge samples. Moment-independent importance measures of these uncertainty parameters were derived by numerical integrations with the conditional and unconditional probability density functions, and the uncertainty parameters were ranked in descending order of their importance. Different from Tornado diagram approach, the impacts of uncertainty parameters on the whole probability distributions of bridge seismic demands and the interactions of uncertainty parameters were considered simultaneously in the importance measure analysis approach. Results show that the interaction of uncertainty parameters had significant impacts on the seismic demand of components, and in some cases, it changed the most significant parameters for piers, bearings and abutments.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.25-37
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• 2008

In a fault tree analysis, an uncertainty importance measure is often used to assess how much uncertainty of the top event probability (Q) is attributable to the uncertainty of a basic event probability ($q_i$), and thus, to identify those basic events whose uncertainties need to be reduced to effectively reduce the uncertainty of Q. For evaluating the measures suggested by many authors which assess a percentage change in the variance V of Q with respect to unit percentage change in the variance $v_i$ of $q_i$, V and ${\partial}V/{\partial}v_i$ need to be estimated analytically or by Monte Carlo simulation. However, it is very complicated to analytically compute V and ${\partial}V/{\partial}v_i$ for large-sized fault trees, and difficult to estimate them in a robust manner by Monte Carlo simulation. In this paper, we propose a method for evaluating the measure using discretization technique and Monte Carlo simulation. The proposed method provides a stable uncertainty importance of each basic event.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.179-185
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• 2010

In a sensitivity analysis, an uncertainty importance measure is often used to assess how much uncertainty of an output is attributable to the uncertainty of an input, and thus, to identify those inputs whose uncertainties need to be reduced to effectively reduce the uncertainty of output. A function is called monotonic if the output is either increasing or decreasing with respect to any of the inputs. In this paper, for a monotonic function, we propose a method for evaluating the measure which assesses the expected percentage reduction in the variance of output due to ascertaining the value of input. The proposed method can be applied to the case that the output is expressed as linear and nonlinear monotonic functions of inputs, and that the input follows symmetric and asymmetric distributions. In addition, the proposed method provides a stable uncertainty importance of each input by discretizing the distribution of input to the discrete distribution. However, the proposed method is computationally demanding since it is based on Monte Carlo simulation.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.187-195
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• 2009

In a fault tree analysis, an uncertainty importance measure is often used to assess how much uncertainty of the top event probability (Q) is attributable to the uncertainty of a basic event probability ($q_i$), and thus, to identify those basic events whose uncertainties need to be reduced to effectively reduce the uncertainty of Q. For evaluating the measures suggested by many authors which assess a percentage change in the variance V of Q with respect to unit percentage change in the variance $\upsilon_i$ of $q_i$, V and ${\partial}V/{\partial}{\upsilon}_i$ need to be estimated analytically or by Monte Carlo simulation. However, it is very complicated to analytically compute V and ${\partial}V/{\partial}{\upsilon}_i$ for large-sized fault trees, and difficult to estimate them in a robust manner by Monte Carlo simulation. In this paper, we propose a method for experimentally evaluating the measure using a Taguchi orthogonal array. The proposed method is very computationally efficient compared to the method based on Monte Carlo simulation, and provides a stable uncertainty importance of each basic event.

• IE interfaces
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.67-78
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• 1993

In this paper, we deal with the application of the fuzzy sets theory to evaluate and estimate the system reliability under the fault tree analysis. We formulate the uncertainty of component reliability to fuzzy sets, and propose a procedure for obtaining the system reliability in case the system structure is described by fault tree. An importance measure of each component is proposed. Computer program for fuzzy fault tree analysis(FFTA) is developed using C language to obtain the system reliability and the component‘s fuzzy importance.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.321-344
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• 2017

Smart homes are the new generation of homes where pervasive computing is employed to make the lives of the residents more convenient. Human activity recognition (HAR) is a fundamental task in these environments. Since critical decisions will be made based on HAR results, accurate recognition of human activities with low uncertainty is of crucial importance. In this paper, a novel HAR method based on a difference of convex programming (DCP) problem is represented, which manages to handle uncertainty. For this purpose, given an input sensor data stream, a primary belief in each activity is calculated for the sensor events. Since the primary beliefs are calculated based on some abstractions, they naturally bear an amount of uncertainty. To mitigate the effect of the uncertainty, a DCP problem is defined and solved to yield secondary beliefs. In this procedure, the uncertainty stemming from a sensor event is alleviated by its neighboring sensor events in the input stream. The final activity inference is based on the secondary beliefs. The proposed method is evaluated using a well-known and publicly available dataset. It is compared to four HAR schemes, which are based on temporal probabilistic graphical models, and a convex optimization-based HAR procedure, as benchmarks. The proposed method outperforms the benchmarks, having an acceptable accuracy of 82.61%, and an average F-measure of 82.3%.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.680-685
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• 2005

Purpose. The purpose of the study was to categorize nursing students' subjectivity in their attitude toward their jobs, and thereby understand the differences among these attitude types. Methods. The study used a Q-method to measure nursing students' attitude toward jobs identity types. In-depth and objective interviews and literature review formed Q sample. The P sample consisted of 25 nursing students. Results. The results of the study show that nursing students can be categorized into three types, depending on their attitudes toward their jobs. The firs type, 'interest-oriented' students, strongly disagree to the follow-ing: giving priority to job over marriage, standing unfair treatment in the workplace, the importance of pro-motion opportunity, irresponsibility, and uncertainty. The 'reward-oriented' students, on the other hand, strongly disagree to the following: indifference to career prospects, employment-related relocation of residence, irresponsibility, standing difficulties, and compromises with others. The third type of nursing students is the possession-oriented students, who strongly disapprove of irresponsibility, refusal to compromise with reality, standing unfair job allocation or promotion and career uncertainty. Conclusions. The study on nursing college students' attitude toward their jobs is meaningful in the following aspects: First, the study clarifies nursing college students' attitudes toward their job by categorizing it. Second, the study confirms the changing attitudes of nursing students toward jobs with the change of times and calls for proper educational programs to foster healthy career attitudes. Third, proper decision-making as regards jobs and job allocation for nurses, or their career attitudes, is beneficial to individuals, the medical industry, and society.