Department of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4237, USA.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2011 Sep;17(3):553-70. doi: 10.1007/s11948-010-9242-2. Epub 2010 Nov 2.
Engineers must deal with risks and uncertainties as a part of their professional work and, in particular, uncertainties are inherent to engineering models. Models play a central role in engineering. Models often represent an abstract and idealized version of the mathematical properties of a target. Using models, engineers can investigate and acquire understanding of how an object or phenomenon will perform under specified conditions. This paper defines the different stages of the modeling process in engineering, classifies the various sources of uncertainty that arise in each stage, and discusses the categories into which these uncertainties fall. The paper then considers the way uncertainty and modeling are approached in science and the criteria for evaluating scientific hypotheses, in order to highlight the very different criteria appropriate for the development of models and the treatment of the inherent uncertainties in engineering. Finally, the paper puts forward nine guidelines for the treatment of uncertainty in engineering modeling.
工程师必须将风险和不确定性作为其专业工作的一部分来应对，特别是不确定性是工程模型所固有的。模型在工程中起着核心作用。模型通常代表目标的数学性质的抽象和理想化版本。通过使用模型，工程师可以研究和了解对象或现象在特定条件下将如何表现。本文定义了工程建模过程的不同阶段，对每个阶段出现的各种不确定性来源进行了分类，并讨论了这些不确定性所属的类别。然后，本文考虑了科学中不确定性和建模的处理方式，以及评估科学假设的标准，以突出适用于模型开发和处理工程中固有不确定性的非常不同的标准。最后，本文提出了九条关于工程建模中不确定性处理的指南。
