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At the Department of Mathematical Statistics it was soon realized that the book by Barlow and Proschan was too brief and too theoretical to be suitable as a textbook for the reliability course at NTNU. Marvin Rausand therefore started to write a compendium in reliability. The first version of this compendium was printed in 1979. Professor Høyland and professor Holen joined the project and they decides to write a textbook in Norwegian. This book was called "Pålitelighetsanalyse" and was published by Tapir in 1983 (Holen, A. T., A. Høyland, and M. Rausand, 1983, Tapir, Trondheim). The book was reprinted several times and was used as a textbook in courses in reliability analysis both at NTNU and other Nordic universities until 1994 - when the first edition of the book "System Reliability Theory" was published (This book was based on the Norwegian book, but professor Holen decided not to participate in writing the English book).
SINTEF Safety and Reliability
The SINTEF activities on safety and reliability started in 1979 with a small group of researchers in the section for Tero-technology [Section leader Reidar Østvik] that was part of SINTEF Machine Design [Head of department was Erik Jersin]. The safety and reliability group was headed by Stein B. Jensen who had a PhD from the Electro-Power department of NTNU. Other central members were Ranveig K. Tinmannsvik, Roar S. Andersen and Marvin Rausand (the last two joined the group in January 1980). In the first years the group got several big projects within the Safety Offshore program (see above) and new group members were recruited. Among these were Jan Hovden and Gudmund Engen.
The RAMS Group
The RAMS group can be traced back to the adjunct professorship of Helge Christensen, Department of Machine Design, in the mid 1970s. He had a professorship in tero-technology, but also showed a keen interest in safety and reliability issues. He therefore initiated a course module called "Industrial safety and reliability", which was offered to 4th year Master students. From 1978, this course module was lectured by Marvin Rausand - while he still was an assistant professor at the Department of Mathematical Statistics, NTNU. Marvin Rausand started working for SINTEF Machine Design in January 1980, but continued to lecture the course module.
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