Effects of climate change on life-cycle reliability of structures

The resilience of infrastructure is increasingly threatened by climate-induced hazards, such as sea-level rise and intensified rainfall, which challenge conventional engineering assumptions based on stationary conditions. This keynote paper presents recent advances in life-cycle structural reliability assessment under nonstationary climate effects. Probabilistic models incorporating sea-level rise projections and non-Poisson earthquake occurrences reveal amplified tsunami risks to coastal infrastructure. For rainfall-induced landslides, time-dependent fragility functions derived from stochastic rainfall models and slope stability analyses capture escalating failure probabilities across the lifespans of various structures and civil infrastructure systems. Additionally, a revised load and resistance factor design methodology introduces climate-adjusted partial factors for embankment design under future flood scenarios. These approaches integrate climate projections, surrogate modeling, and stochastic processes to better assess dynamic structural vulnerabilities. By aligning structural reliability analysis with evolving environmental conditions, this study supports the development of adaptive, risk-informed infrastructure systems.