Abstract
Dams and reservoirs are useful systems in water conservancy projects; however, they also pose a high-risk potential for large downstream areas. Flood, as the driving force of dam overtopping, is the main cause of dam failure. Dam floods and their risks are of interest to researchers and managers. In hydraulic engineering, there is a growing tendency to evaluate dam flood risk based on statistical and probabilistic methods that are unsuitable for the situations with rare historical data or low flood probability, so a more reasonable dam flood risk analysis method with fewer application restrictions is needed. Therefore, different from previous studies, this study develops a flood risk analysis method for large dams based on the concept of total risk factor (TRF) used initially in dam seismic risk analysis. The proposed method is not affected by the adequacy of historical data or the low probability of flood and is capable of analyzing the dam structure influence, the flood vulnerability of the dam site, and downstream risk as well as estimating the TRF of each dam and assigning corresponding risk classes to each dam. Application to large dams in the Dadu River Basin, Southwestern China, demonstrates that the proposed method provides quick risk estimation and comparison, which can help local management officials perform more detailed dam safety evaluations for useful risk management information.
Highlights
Dams, considered to be “structures of public utility,” play an essential role in controlling and harvesting benefits from floods and always pose potential risks to human life and property on their downstream side in the event of flood [1,2,3]
We propose a method for flood risk analysis of large dams by extending International Commission on LargeDams (ICOLD)’s and Bureau’s total risk factor (TRF) concepts, which can be used to rate the total risk of each evaluated dam quickly by evaluating the hazard of the dam site, the risk rating of flood vulnerability, and the downstream potential risk and by assigning the risk classes of each dam in terms of TRFs
TRF = [(CRF + HRF + ARF) + DHF] × PDF. This equation contains three components of the dam structure, the downstream risk, and the seismic vulnerability rating. These three components are quantified by the sum of capacity risk factor (CRF), height risk factor (HRF), and age risk factor (ARF), the downstream hazard factor (DHF) based on population and property at risk, and the predicted damage factor (PDF) based on the dam type and the site-specific seismic hazard, respectively
Summary
Dams, considered to be “structures of public utility,” play an essential role in controlling and harvesting benefits from floods and always pose potential risks to human life and property on their downstream side in the event of flood [1,2,3]. Dam flood risk evaluation can provide a rational basis for risk management, the importance of which has increasingly been recognized by both academic researchers and managers [7] It is usually performed with applying statistical methods or sophisticated mathematical models; for situations in which data is lacking, improvements or replacements are necessary to provide reliable results faster. We propose a method for flood risk analysis of large dams by extending ICOLD’s and Bureau’s TRF concepts, which can be used to rate the total risk of each evaluated dam quickly by evaluating the hazard of the dam site, the risk rating of flood vulnerability, and the downstream potential risk and by assigning the risk classes of each dam in terms of TRFs
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