Abstract
Dam break inundation mapping is essential for risk management and mitigation, emergency action planning, and potential consequences assessment. To quantify flood hazard associated with dam failures, flooding variables must be predicted by efficient and robust numerical models capable to effectively cope with the computational difficulties posed by complex flows on real topographies. Validation against real-field data of historical dam-breaks is extremely useful to verify models’ capabilities and accuracy. However, such catastrophic events are rather infrequent, and available data on the breaching mechanism and downstream flooding are usually inaccurate and incomplete. Nevertheless, in some cases, real-field data collected after the event (mainly breach size, maximum water depths and flood wave arrival times at selected locations, water marks, and extent of flooded areas) are adequate to set up valuable and significant test cases, provided that all other data required to perform numerical simulations are available (mainly topographic data of the floodable area and input parameters defining the dam-break scenario). This paper provides a review of the historical dam-break events for which real-field datasets useful for validation purposes can be retrieved in the literature. The resulting real-field test cases are divided into well-documented test cases, for which extensive and complete data are already available, and cases with partial or inaccurate datasets. Type and quality of the available data are specified for each case. Finally, validation data provided by dam-break studies on physical models reproducing real topographies are presented and discussed. This review aims at helping dam-break modelers: (a) to select the most suitable real-field test cases for validating their numerical models, (b) to facilitate data access by indicating relevant bibliographic references, and (c) to identify test cases of potential interest worthy of further research.
Highlights
Artificial dams are hydraulic works of fundamental importance for human development since ancient times due to the great benefits provided by the storage of large water volumes, such as a water supply for drinking and irrigation purposes
Even though a time-related analysis shows that the frequency of failure of large dams has been reduced by a factor of four or more over the last forty years worldwide [1], dam incidents still occur at present with a non-negligible frequency [2–4]
The main aim of this review is to provide modelers with a set of real-field test cases for validation purposes, facilitating the retrieval of the corresponding data
Summary
Artificial dams are hydraulic works of fundamental importance for human development since ancient times due to the great benefits provided by the storage of large water volumes, such as a water supply for drinking and irrigation purposes. All these elements can increase dam-break flood risk in downstream areas, which is further amplified by growing exposure of human settlements and potential high vulnerability to flooding [8] For this reason, research related to the assessment of the hydraulic risk resulting from the failure of retaining structures is constantly ongoing and involves scientists from all over the world. In some cases, data collected after or occasionally during the event (mainly maximum water depths and flood wave arrival times at selected locations, and extent of the flooded areas) are sufficient to set up interesting validation test cases, provided that all other essential data required to perform numerical simulations are available (i.e., the digital elevation model of the floodable area and, possibly, of the reservoir, and the input parameters defining the dam-break scenario).
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