CE 463 Probabilistic and Statistical Methods in Civil Engineering (S2)

August 4, 2016
Topic Useful Probability Distributions
Practice Problems
1. The total load, X (in tons), on the roof of a building has the following PDF:
24
f X x 3
for 3 x 6
x
0
elsewhere
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)

Determine and plot the CDF of X.

What is the expected total load? (Ans 4 tons)
Determine the coefficient of variation of the total load. (Ans 19.9%)
Suppose the roof can carry only 5.5 tons before collapse. What is the probability that
the roof will collapse? (Ans 0.063)

2. Severe snow storm is defined as a storm whose snowfall exceeds 10 inches. Let X be the
amount of snowfall in a severe snow storm. The cumulative distribution function (CDF) of
X in a given town is
4
10
FX x 1
for x 10
x
0
elsewhere
(a) Determine the median of X.
(b) What is the expected amount of snowfall in the town in a severe snow storm?
(c) Suppose a disastrous snow storm is defined as a storm with over 15 inches of snowfall.
What percentage of the severe snow storms are disastrous?
(d) Suppose the probability that the town will experience 0, 1, and 2 severe snow storms
in a year is 0.5, 0.4, and 0.1, respectively. Determine the probability that the town will
not experience a disastrous snow storm in a given year. Assume the amounts of
snowfall between storms are statistically independent.
3. The time between severe earthquakes (i.e., recurrence time T) at a given region follows a
lognormal distribution with a coefficient of variation of 40%. The expected time between
severe earthquakes is 80 year.
(a) Determine the parameters of this lognormally distributed recurrence time T. (Ans
4.308, 0.385)
(b) Determine the probability that a severe earthquake will occur within 20 year from the
previous one.
(c) Suppose the last severe earthquake in the region took place 100 year ago. What is the
probability that a severe earthquake will occur over the next year?
4. The occurrence of tornadoes in a county can be modeled as a Poisson process.
Twenty tornadoes have touched down in the county within last twenty years. If there is at
least one occurrence of tornadoes in a year, that year is classified as a tornado year.
(a) What is the probability that next year will be a tornado year?
(b) What is the probability that there will be 2 tornado year within next 3 years?
(c) On the average, over a 10-yr period,
i. How many tornadoes are expected to occur?
ii. How many tornado year are expected to occur?
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5. The following is the 10-yr record of floods between 1994 and 2003 in Town A.

The occurrences of floods in the town may be modeled as a Poisson process.

(a) On the basis of the above historical flood data, determine the probability that there will
be between one and three floods in Town A over the next 3 year.
(b) A sewage treatment plant is located on a high ground in the town. The probability
that it will be inundated during a flood is 0.02. What is the probability that the treatment
plant will not be inundated for a period of 5 year?
6. Strong earthquakes occur according to a Poisson process in a metropolitan area with a mean
rate of once in 50 year. There are three bridges in the metropolitan area. When a strong
earthquake occurs, there is a probability of 0.3 that a given bridge will collapse. Assume the
events of collapse between bridges during a strong earthquake are statistically independent;
also, the events of bridge collapse between earthquakes are also statistically independent.
(a) What is the probability of at most one strong earthquake occurring in this metropolitan
area within the next 20 year? (Ans 0.938)
(b) During a strong earthquake, what is the probability that exactly one of the three bridges
will collapse? (Ans 0.441)
(c) What is the probability of no bridge collapse from strong earthquakes during the next
20 year? (Ans 0.769)
7. An offshore platform is built to withstand ocean wave forces.
(a) The annual maximum wave height of the ocean waves (above mean sea level) is a
random variable with a Gaussian distribution having a mean height of 4.0 m and a COV
of 0.80. What is the probability that the wave height will exceed 6 m in a given year?
(b) If the platform were to be designed for a wave height (above mean sea level) such that
it will not be exceeded by ocean waves over a period of 3 year with probability
of 80%, what should be the platform height above the mean sea level? Wave height
exceedances between years are statistically independent.
(c) Suppose that ocean waves exceeding 6 meters will occur according to a Poisson process
and each of these waves can potentially cause damage to the platform with a probability
of 0.40. What is the probability that there will be no damage to the platform in 3 year?
Damages to the platform between waves are statistically independent.
8. A country is subjected to natural hazards - floods, earthquakes, and tornadoes. Suppose
earthquakes occur according to a Poisson process with a mean rate of 1 in 10 years; tornado
occurrences are also Poisson-distributed with a mean rate of 0.3 per year. There can be either
one or no flood each year; hence the occurrence of a flood each year follows a Bernoulli
sequence with a mean return period of 5 years. Assume these hazards occur independently.
(a) If no hazard occur during a given year, it is referred to as a good year. What is the
probability of a good year? (Ans - 0.536)
(b) What is the probability that 2 of the next 5 years will be good years? (Ans - 0.287)
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