\input zb-basic \input zb-ioport \iteman{io-port 05879625} \itemau{Fuchs, Martin; Neumaier, Arnold} \itemti{Potential based clouds in robust design optimization.} \itemso{J. Stat. Theory Pract. 3, No. 1, 225-238 (2009).} \itemab Summary: Robust design optimization methods applied to real life problems face some major difficulties: how to deal with the estimation of probability densities when data are sparse, how to cope with high dimensional problems and how to use valuable information in the form of unformalized expert knowledge. We introduce in detail the clouds formalism as a means to process available uncertainty information reliably, even if limited in amount and possibly lacking a formal description. This enables a worst-case analysis with confidence regions of relevant scenarios which can be involved in an optimization problem formulation for robust design. \itemrv{~} \itemcc{} \itemut{clouds; potential clouds; robust design; design optimization; confidence regions; uncertainty modeling} \itemli{doi:10.1080/15598608.2009.10411922} \end