Professor Tim Bedford

FRSE FSaRS FIMA

Associate Principal

Associate Principal, Research and Innovation & Professor of Risk & Decision Analysis

Personal statement

In collaboration with the Principal and Professors Kerr and Uttamchandani, Professor Bedford leads activity in Knowledge Exchange and Enterprise.

Professor Bedford leads the Research and Innovation portfolio in the University Executive Team, working in close collaboration with the Principal and Deputy Associate Principals Professors Hamill, Kerr and McArthur.

Professor Bedford has two roles at the University: He leads the Research and Innovation portfolio within the university, with a particular focus on the Innovation aspects, working closely with other senior colleagues each of whom has specific responsibilities within R&I; He is also Professor of Decision and Risk Analysis within the Management Science Department of the Business School.

Key responsibilities within the Associate Principal role are: representing the R&I interests of the University in discussions with Government and other public bodies such as research and innovation funders; convening the University Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee and, with colleagues, developing university strategy in research and innovation; providing leadership to cross-faculty initiatives such as the Technology and Innovation Centre and the University Strategic Themes; engaging with external university research partners in business and government; leading the University involvement in the Association of European Technological Universities, CESAER, and, convening the University Enterprise Forum. He led the development of the University Strategy for Innovation, and is currently leading work around the vision as a Leading International Technological University. In addition he is one of the key figures in the Glasgow Science and Innovation Audit.

Professor Bedford is currently a member of the Scottish Funding Council Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a member of its Business Innovation Forum. In 2016 he was on the advisory board of the Reid Review of Scottish Innovation Centres.

In his role as Professor of Decision and Risk Analysis, Professor Bedford continues to teach, supervise PhDs and conduct research in probabilistic risk analysis, uncertainty modelling, reliability and maintenance modelling, structured expert judgement and decision analysis.

He studied mathematics at Warwick University where he obtained BSc, M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees. He holds an Honorary Doctorate in recognition of his work in risk analysis, from the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons, and has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s National Academy. He held a fellowship at King's College Cambridge where he was a member of the King's College Research Centre project on Chaotic Dynamics. He then took a lectureship in applied probability at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and later became Senior Lecturer in Applications of Decision Theory in the same department.

Prof Bedford has been active in various professional societies, amongst others the European Safety and Reliability Association and the Dutch Reliability Society, of which he was Chair. He has been Chair of the Committee of Professors of Operational Research, the network of UK OR Professors and was a member of the Board of Directors of the European Safety Reliability and Data Association ESReDA. He has been elected a Fellow of the UK Safety and Reliability Society and of the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications. He was a member of the EPSRC Mathematics Programme Strategic Advisory Panel. He has carried out research and consultancy projects for a range of companies including Aveco, ESTEC, MoD, DSTL, Railway Safety, Magnox, Netherlands Ministry for Water Management, Philips, Scottish Power, SSE. He was awarded the Donald Julius Groen prize for 2009 by the IMechE Safety and Reliability Group, and in 2013 was awarded the Lloyds Risk Prize for work on Societal Risk. He was co-chair of the EURO2015 Conference - the major European conference on Operational Research in 2015, and also co-chair of the ESREL2016 Conference – the major European conference on Safety and Reliability.

Tim Bedford says:

“Collaboration with external partners is a major theme for both of my roles. My research into risk analysis tries to combine fundamental theoretical advances - particularly around probability and consequence modelling - with applications to real-life problems. Fortunately in the area of risk management and analysis these two elements go together very well. There are lots of interesting theoretical problems that arise from trying to make sense of practical issues! I am an active researcher involved in several different research projects, and helping the academic and practitioner community through consulting, conference organisation and more. With my colleagues in the Risk Consortium here at Strathclyde I do a lot of work with companies that have live problems in need of fresh approaches.

I have been very lucky in my career to get the opportunity to develop into new fields of expertise. I started out as a pure mathematician working on fractals, and was fortunate to work for Benoit Mandelbrot. I have always been interested in potential applications though, and now have lots of opportunities for this! In my spare time I play trombone with the University Big Band. My great ambition, which will certainly remain unfulfilled, is to play like Frank Rosolino, J.J. Johnson or Curtis Fuller.”

Publications

Quantification and modelling of epistemic uncertainties for availability risk of future offshore wind farms using expert judgement
Zitrou A., Bedford T., Walls L.
Safety and Reliability, pp. 805–812, (2014)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1201/b17399-113
On the construction of minimum information bivariate copula families
Bedford Tim, Wilson Kevin J.
Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics Vol 66, pp. 703-723, (2014)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10463-013-0422-0
Assessing parameter uncertainty on coupled models using minimum information methods
Bedford Tim, Wilson Kevin, Daneshkhah Alireza
Reliability Engineering and System Safety Vol 125, pp. 3-12, (2014)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ress.2013.05.011
Modelling epistemic uncertainty in early life offshore wind farm performance to support risk reduction decisions
Zitrou Athena, Bedford Tim, Walls Lesley, Wilson Kevin
Risk Analysis, (2014)
A model for availability growth to support decisions in the presence of systemic risk for new generation offshore wind farms
Zitrou Athena, Bedford Tim, Walls Lesley
Reliability Engineering and System Safety, (2014)
Availability growth and state-of-knowledge uncertainty simulation for offshore wind power plants
Zitrou Athena, Bedford Tim, Walls Lesley, Wilson Kevin, Bell Keith
Proceedings of the 12th Wind Integration Workshop, pp. 785-788, (2014)

More publications

Projects

  • DRIVE-AB: Driving Re-investment in R&D and Responsible Antibiotic Use (FP7 IMI) Bedford, Tim (Co-investigator) Cooke, Roger (Co-investigator) Morton, Alexander David (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Oct-2014 - 30-Sep-2017
  • DRIVE-AB: Driving Re-investment in R&D and Responsible Antibiotic Use (FP7 IMI) Bedford, Tim (Co-investigator) Cooke, Roger (Co-investigator) Morton, Alexander David (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Oct-2014 - 30-Sep-2017
  • Impact Acceleration Account - University Of Strathclyde 2012 Bedford, Tim (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Sep-2014 - 30-Sep-2015
  • Project funded by dstl on the value of military standards Revie, Matthew (Academic) Bedford, Tim (Academic) Period 06-Jan-2014 - 06-Jul-2014
  • COST Action IS1304: Bridging the Gap Between Scientific Uncertainty and Evidence Based Decision Making Bedford, Tim (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Jan-2014 - 30-Nov-2014
  • GARPUR - transmission system reliability management Bedford, Tim (Co-investigator) Bell, Keith (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Sep-2013 - 31-Aug-2017
  • Risk Modelling Bedford, Tim (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Jul-2013 - 30-Sep-2015
  • MUSE: Models of University and Schools Engagement Marshall, Stephen (Co-investigator) Mulholland, Anthony (Co-investigator) Nash, David (Co-investigator) Bedford, Tim (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Jan-2013 - 31-Dec-2015
  • Institutional Sponsorship 2012 - University Of Strathclyde / RA4869 Bedford, Tim (Co-investigator) Butler, Stephen (Co-investigator) McArthur, Stephen (Co-investigator) Period 01-Apr-2012 - 31-Mar-2013
  • Project funded by ALSTOM Power to develop a statistical model to assess the residual uncertainty of the heat rate of the thermodynamic cycle. Revie, Matthew (Academic) Bedford, Tim (Academic) Period 01-Jan-2012 - 01-Jan-2013
  • New mathematical tools for modelling uncertainties in offshore turbine operation and maintenance Bell, Keith (Co-investigator) Walls, Lesley (Co-investigator) Bedford, Tim (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Apr-2011 - 31-Mar-2014
  • Project funded by Doosan Babcock Power Limited to model boiler tube failures and the eects of covariates on the failure rate. Revie, Matthew (Academic) Bedford, Tim (Academic) Walls, Lesley (Academic) Quigley, John (Academic) Period 03-Jan-2011 - 03-Jan-2012
  • Project funded by a consortium of utility energy companies to model and benchmark health and safety data. Revie, Matthew (Academic) Bedford, Tim (Academic) Period 03-Jan-2011 - 03-Jan-2013
  • Rolls Royce Power Generation Project Bedford, Tim (Co-investigator) Bellingham, Richard (Principal Investigator) Period 20-May-2010 - 28-Oct-2010
  • COUPLED MODELS: EXPERT JUDGEMENT, EMULATORS AND MODEL UNCERTAINTY Bedford, Tim (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Aug-2007 - 31-Jul-2010
  • Sandpit - Rethinking Human Reliability Analysis Methodologies Bedford, Tim (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Mar-2007 - 31-May-2008
  • System Risks In Information-Rich Environments: Monitoring For Safe And Cost-Effective Operation (Bridging The Gap) Huxham, Christine (Co-investigator) McArthur, Stephen (Co-investigator) McGettrick, Andrew (Co-investigator) Mulholland, Anthony (Co-investigator) Turan, Osman (Co-investigator) Bedford, Tim (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Jan-2007 - 30-Apr-2010
  • System Risks In Information-Rich Environments: Monitoring For Safe And Cost-Effective Operation (Bridging The Gap) / RA4319 Bedford, Tim (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Jan-2007 - 30-Apr-2010
  • Doctoral Training Grant 2006 / RA4032 Bedford, Tim (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Oct-2006 - 30-Sep-2010
  • Enabling Contract for Provison of Research and Development in the use of Expert Judgement in Safety (and Reliability and Maintainability) Cases Bedford, Tim (Co-investigator) Quigley, John (Co-investigator) Walls, Lesley (Principal Investigator) Period 21-Dec-2005 - 30-Sep-2009
  • Doctoral Training Grant / RA3696 Bedford, Tim (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Oct-2005 - 30-Sep-2009
  • Dependent competing risks in reliability and maintainability assessment Bedford, Tim (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Jul-2005 - 31-Jan-2009
  • Governing Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analysis for RSSB's Safety Risk Model Quigley, John (Co-investigator) Bedford, Tim (Principal Investigator) Period 01-Oct-2004 - 01-Oct-2007

More projects