From 26 to 28 March 2008, a conference entitled “Fiabilité des matériaux et des structures” (“Reliability of materials and structures”, JNFiab’08) took place at the University of Nantes, France, bringing together the French scientific communities interested in reliability and risk analysis, as applied to materials and structures. This colloquium followed on from several different events: the fifth “Reliability of materials and structures” conference, the second Méc@proba training day and the second scientific session in the subject area of “Understanding risk in civil engineering” (MRGenCi scientific interest group). It combined their themes and concerns as an extension of the first shared workshop between the Associations Françaises de Génie Civil (AFGC, or French Associations of Civil Engineering) and the Associations Françaises de Méchanique (AFM, or French Associations of Mechanical Engineering), during the twenty-fifth annual meeting of the Association Universitaire de Génie Civil (AUGC, Universities civil engineering association) held on 23–25 May 2007, in Bordeaux, France. This book was first conceived during these sessions, organized by the MRGenCi and Méc@Proba scientific interest groups, where the authors gave presentations on the advances they have made in their respective fields.Read less <