Reliability and survival analysis are important applications of stochastic mathematics (probability, statistics and stochastic processes) that are usually covered separately in spite of the similarity of the involved mathematical theory. This title aims to redress this situation: it includes 21 chapters divided into four parts: Survival analysis, Reliability, Quality of life, and Related topics. Many of these chapters were presented at the European Seminar on Mathematical Methods for Survival Analysis, Reliability and Quality of Life in 2006.

Survival analysis concerns sequential occurrences of events governed by probabilistic laws. Recent decades have witnessed many applications of survival analysis in various disciplines. This book introduces both classic survival models and theories along with newly developed techniques. Readers will learn how to perform analysis of survival data by following numerous empirical illustrations in SAS. Survival Analysis: Models and Applications: Presents basic techniques before leading onto some of the most advanced topics in survival analysis. Assumes only a minimal knowledge of SAS whilst enabling more experienced users to learn new techniques of data input and manipulation. Provides numerous examples of SAS code to illustrate each of the methods, along with step-by-step instructions to perform each technique. Highlights the strengths and limitations of each technique covered. Covering a wide scope of survival techniques and methods, from the introductory to the advanced, this book can be used as a useful reference book for planners, researchers, and professors who are working in settings involving various lifetime events. Scientists interested in survival analysis should find it a useful guidebook for the incorporation of survival data and methods into their projects.

This book contains extended versions of carefully selected and reviewed papers presented at the Third International Conference on Mathematical Methods in Reliability, held in Norway in 2002. It provides an overview of current research activities in reliability theory. The authors are all leading experts in the field. Readership: Graduate students, academics and professionals in probability & statistics, reliability analysis, survival analysis, industrial engineering, software engineering, operations research and applied mathematics research.

Statistical Models and Methods for Reliability and Survival Analysis brings together contributions by specialists in statistical theory as they discuss their applications providing up-to-date developments in methods used in survival analysis, statistical goodness of fit, stochastic processes for system reliability, amongst others. Many of these are related to the work of Professor M. Nikulin in statistics over the past 30 years. The authors gather together various contributions with a broad array of techniques and results, divided into three parts - Statistical Models and Methods, Statistical Models and Methods in Survival Analysis, and Reliability and Maintenance. The book is intended for researchers interested in statistical methodology and models useful in survival analysis, system reliability and statistical testing for censored and non-censored data.

This book presents and standardizes statistical models and methods that can be directly applied to both reliability and survival analysis. These two types of analysis are widely used in many fields, including engineering, management, medicine, actuarial science, the environmental sciences, and the life sciences. Though there are a number of books on reliability analysis and a handful on survival analysis, there are virtually no books on both topics and their overlapping concepts. Offering an essential textbook, this book will benefit students, researchers, and practitioners in reliability and survival analysis, reliability engineering, biostatistics, and the biomedical sciences.

Earthquake occurrence modeling is a rapidly developing research area. This book deals with its critical issues, ranging from theoretical advances to practical applications. The introductory chapter outlines state-of-the-art earthquake modeling approaches based on stochastic models. Chapter 2 presents seismogenesis in association with the evolving stress field. Chapters 3 to 5 present earthquake occurrence modeling by means of hidden (semi-)Markov models and discuss associated characteristic measures and relative estimation aspects. Further comparisons, the most important results and our concluding remarks are provided in Chapters 6 and 7.

The author investigates the Cramer –Lundberg model, collecting the most interesting theorems and methods, which estimate probability of default for a company of insurance business. These offer different kinds of approximate values for probability of default on the base of normal and diffusion approach and some special asymptotic.

This book analyzes stochastic evolutionary models under the impulse of diffusion, as well as Markov and semi-Markov switches. Models are investigated under the conditions of classical and non-classical (Levy and Poisson) approximations in addition to jumping stochastic approximations and continuous optimization procedures. Among other asymptotic properties, particular attention is given to weak convergence, dissipativity, stability and the control of processes and their generators. Weak convergence of stochastic processes is usually proved by verifying two conditions: the tightness of the distributions of the converging processes, which ensures the existence of a converging subsequence, and the uniqueness of the weak limit. Achieving the limit can be done on the semigroups that correspond to the converging process as well as on appropriate generators. While this provides the convergence of generators, a natural question arises concerning the uniqueness of a limit semigroup.

This monograph studies the relationships between fractional Brownian motion (fBm) and other processes of more simple form. In particular, this book solves the problem of the projection of fBm onto the space of Gaussian martingales that can be represented as Wiener integrals with respect to a Wiener process. It is proved that there exists a unique martingale closest to fBm in the uniform integral norm. Numerical results concerning the approximation problem are given. The upper bounds of distances from fBm to the different subspaces of Gaussian martingales are evaluated and the numerical calculations are involved. The approximations of fBm by a uniformly convergent series of Lebesgue integrals, semimartingales and absolutely continuous processes are presented. As auxiliary but interesting results, the bounds from below and from above for the coefficient appearing in the representation of fBm via the Wiener process are established and some new inequalities for Gamma functions, and even for trigonometric functions, are obtained.

Estimation of Stochastic Processes is intended for researchers in the field of econometrics, financial mathematics, statistics or signal processing. This book gives a deep understanding of spectral theory and estimation techniques for stochastic processes with stationary increments. It focuses on the estimation of functionals of unobserved values for stochastic processes with stationary increments, including ARIMA processes, seasonal time series and a class of cointegrated sequences. Furthermore, this book presents solutions to extrapolation (forecast), interpolation (missed values estimation) and filtering (smoothing) problems based on observations with and without noise, in discrete and continuous time domains. Extending the classical approach applied when the spectral densities of the processes are known, the minimax method of estimation is developed for a case where the spectral information is incomplete and the relations that determine the least favorable spectral densities for the optimal estimations are found.