Discretization of structural reliability problems: An application to runway overrun

Bayesian networks (BNs) are a powerful tool for efficiently representing joint probability distributions and updating probabilities in near real-time. We combine BNs with structural reliability concepts to develop a warning system for runway overrun of a landing aircraft, one of the most critical accident types in civil aviation. This warning system allows to use currently available measurements of the aircraft weight, the head wind and the approach speed to update the probability of runway overrun in-flight. Based on the probability, the system informs the pilots whether or not it is save to land. One of the key challenges when treating structural reliability problems in a discrete BN framework is the discretization of the continuous outcome space of the reliability problem. We apply a heuristic developed in Zwirglmaier and Straub (2014) to discretize the reliability problem, such that the discretization error is kept small with only a moderate number of discretization intervals.