Abstract
In recent years attention has shifted from “dam safety” to “dam risk” due to the high loss characteristics of dam breaks. Despite this, there has been little research on social impact assessments. Variable fuzzy sets (VFSs) are a theoretical system for dealing with uncertainty that are used in many industries. However, the relative membership degree (RMD) calculations required for VFSs are complicated and data can be overlooked. Furthermore, the RMD is highly subjective when dealing with qualitative problems, which can seriously affect the accuracy of the results. This study introduces grey system theory (GST) which analyzes the RMD characteristics to improve traditional VFSs. A new method for calculating the social impact of a dam break is proposed based on the correlation between the core parameters of the two theories. The Liujiatai Reservoir is used as a test case and the new and traditional evaluation methods are compared. The results show that the proposed method has advantages when dealing with uncertainty that are consistent with the characteristics of the problems associated with dam break social impact assessments. Moreover, the evaluation results obtained using the proposed method are consistent with, or more accurate than, those obtained using the traditional method.
Highlights
Dams have played a crucial role in the development of human societies and the progress of civilization
The previous sections highlighted the considerable importance of social impact assessments for dam breaks
The social impact of other industries or natural disasters and the existing research results of scholars can provide a reference for the establishment of a social impact assessment index system for dam breaks in this paper [57,58,59]
Summary
Dams have played a crucial role in the development of human societies and the progress of civilization. A dam break occurred at the Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy hydroelectric power plant in southeast Laos on 23 July 2018. This incident caused at least 20 deaths in the downstream area with more than 100 people missing and more than 16,000 people injured [2]. In February 2017, the main spillway of Oroville Dam in California was seriously damaged during flood discharge and the emergency spillway overflowed. This led to the emergency evacuation of more than 188,000 people in the area downstream from the dam [3].
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