Abstract
I would like to express my sincere gratitude towards my supervisors Dr Edoardo Patelli and Professor Rong-Jiung Sheu for giving me the opportunity to take part in the rst dual PhD program between the University of Liverpool and National Tsing-Hua University Taiwan. This has been an amazing lifetime experience for me as I have had the opportunity to work in di erent multi-cultural research groups, broaden my network, and expand the visibility of my research. In particular, Edoardo Patellis guidance and support have been crucial to make my work visible on a global scale and for developing key academic partnership by giving me the opportunity to attend a variety of international conferences and workshops. Also, his personality and sense of humour made my research unique and entertaining. I am very grateful to him. Professor Rong-Jiun Sheu has been more than just a supervisor, he has given me fraternal support, constant guidance, and has taken me on a fantastic journey upon my arrival in Taiwan, integrating me e ortlessly into his research group. I am very grateful to him for having taken me on board. I also acknowledge Matteo Broggi's help, as his understanding of computational analysis and his programming abilities considerably helped me in gaining familiarity with Matlab and OpenCossan. I would like to thank the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) for providing a realistic case study to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approaches developed in this thesis. I am also very grateful to my colleagues at the Institute of Risk and Uncertainty and friends, who proof-read and signi cantly improved the presentation of this thesis. I am also grateful to Karen who helped me translate my abstract into traditional mandarin anguage. Special thanks to my family, who have always motivated me to push harder during dicult times. Finally, I give God the glory for giving me the wisdom, knowledge and understanding to complete the research work presented in this thesis.