Applications of machine learning methods for engineering risk assessment – A review

•Provides a review of machine learning methods used to perform risk assessments.•Automotive industry is leading the adoption of machine learning for risk assessments.•Risk assessments are commonly aided by artificial neural networks in the literature.•Machine learning methods often aid the risk identification phase during risk assessments. The purpose of this article is to present a structured review of publications utilizing machine learning methods to aid in engineering risk assessment. A keyword search is performed to retrieve relevant articles from the databases of Scopus and Engineering Village. The search results are filtered according to seven selection criteria. The filtering process resulted in the retrieval of one hundred and twenty-four relevant research articles. Statistics based on different categories from the citation database is presented. By reviewing the articles, additional categories, such as the type of machine learning algorithm used, the type of input source used, the type of industry targeted, the type of implementation, and the intended risk assessment phase are also determined. The findings show that the automotive industry is leading the adoption of machine learning algorithms for risk assessment. Artificial neural networks are the most applied machine learning method to aid in engineering risk assessment. Additional findings from the review process are also presented in this article.