Since the beginning of electronic computing, people have been interested in carrying out
random experiments on a computer. Such Monte Carlo techniques are now an essential …

This book is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the cross-entropy (CE) method.
The CE method started life around 1997 when the first author proposed an adaptive …

The cross-entropy method is a versatile heuristic tool for solving difficult estimation and
optimization problems, based on Kullback–Leibler (or cross-entropy) minimization. As an …

This book aims to present a state-of-the-art survey of theories and methods of reliability,
maintenance, and warranty with emphasis on multi-unit systems, and to reflect current hot …

The flexible organic amine cations on the interfaces of two-dimensional (2D) hybrid organic–
inorganic perovskite nanosheets could form relaxed structures, which would lead to exotic …

Modern society depends heavily upon a host of systems of varying complexity to perform the
services required. The importance of reliability assumes new dimensions, primarily because …

We identify the zero count problem (or overfitting) of cross-entropy-based methods in the
context of network reliability assessment, and propose a consistent Bayesian estimator that …

Consider a network of unreliable links, modelling for example a communication network.
Estimating the reliability of the network—expressed as the probability that certain nodes in …

Many system reliability problems involve performance functions with a discontinuous
distribution. Such situations occur in both connectivity-and flow-based network reliability …

Conventional approaches to network reliability analysis are based on either connectivity or
capacity. This paper proposes an alternative method which seeks to identify those links or …