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Chriselyn Kavanagh, David Stephens, Peter Hill

Two-dimensional hydraulic models are now widely used to simulate flooding downstream of dams as part of dambreak assessment studies. These models provide high resolution information on velocity distribution across the floodplain, which is of paramount importance to accurate estimation of the depth-velocity product required when undertaking loss of life assessments. In addition, the outputs from these models are much more readily presented as maps and animations, which can be an important tool in the dam safety emergency planning process.

Recently, the United States Army Corps of Engineers released a new version of the popular hydraulic model HEC-RAS which includes the ability to conduct two-dimensional simulations. Other widely used two-dimensional models include DHI’s MIKE suite and TUFLOW. This paper presents a review of the capability, functionality and useability of these models for the specific purpose of dambreak modelling. Key features considered as part of the review include model stability, run times, methods of simulating dam breaches, outputs and the ability to link to loss of life simulation models. A case study comparing the performance of three commonly applied models is presented and discussed, and advice is provided on model selection.

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2016 Papers

2016 – Benchmarking 2D Hydraulic Models for Dambreak and Consequence Assessments
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Chriselyn Kavanagh, David Stephens, Peter Hill

Two-dimensional hydraulic models are now widely used to simulate flooding downstream of dams as part of dambreak assessment studies. These models provide high resolution information on velocity distribution across the floodplain, which is of paramount importance to accurate estimation of the depth-velocity product required when undertaking loss of life assessments. In addition, the outputs from these models are much more readily presented as maps and animations, which can be an important tool in the dam safety emergency planning process.

Recently, the United States Army Corps of Engineers released a new version of the popular hydraulic model HEC-RAS which includes the ability to conduct two-dimensional simulations. Other widely used two-dimensional models include DHI’s MIKE suite and TUFLOW. This paper presents a review of the capability, functionality and useability of these models for the specific purpose of dambreak modelling. Key features considered as part of the review include model stability, run times, methods of simulating dam breaches, outputs and the ability to link to loss of life simulation models. A case study comparing the performance of three commonly applied models is presented and discussed, and advice is provided on model selection.
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2016 Papers

2016 – Towards Improved Efficiency of Dambreak Modelling and Consequence Assessment Projects
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D Stephens and P Hill

Dambreak modelling and consequence assessment is a key component of many dam safety related studies. The outputs from these assessments can be used to inform the consequence category, dam safety emergency planning, risk-based surveillance and dam safety risk assessment. These studies are complex, intensive and expensive to complete, and all too often there is a need to manipulate or extrapolate the results of these assessments to fit a purpose other than what they were intended for. This issue is particularly prevalent for risk assessment, where the likelihood calculations are directly tied to analysis of the key failure modes, but consequences may be taken from previous studies which were not informed by failure mode selection. The result of this mismatch may lead to inefficiencies and uncertainties in preparing the risk estimates. Subtle changes to the timing or scope of the original dambreak modelling and consequence assessments, at relatively small incremental cost, may help to prevent these issues arising for future studies. Advice is provided on specific issues such as the determination of the downstream extent of the dambreak modelling, selection of the dambreak modelling scenarios and reconciliation of the consequence assessment results with flood and seismic loading partitions for risk assessment. It is hoped that the advice provided will lead to an overall increase in the efficiency and value for money of these studies.
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2018 Papers

2018 – Advances in the Automation of Population at Risk Quantification for Dam Failure Consequence Assessment
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Matthew Scorah

Population at Risk (PAR) estimation involves quantification of people who could be exposed to flooding in the event of a dam failure. Conventionally, estimates of PAR involve manual and subjective assessment of individual structures located downstream of dams. To reduce the reliance on subjective judgement and better leverage publicly available population datasets, an automated method of PAR assessment was developed. This approach used the Geoscape dataset of building representations to disaggregate Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016 Census data for a study area around Gawler, South Australia.

Representative day and night spatial distributions of PAR were constructed to characterise the diurnal movement of people between homes and workplaces or other day activities. Flows of people were directly quantified to reduce reliance on high level assumptions regarding exposure. A Random Forest model was used to filter sheds and other unpopulated structures from the Geoscape dataset.
The largest deficiency in this approach is the lack of high detail data to classify building usage. It is recommended that the potential for automation of PAR assessment be continually revisited as more datasets become available.
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2018 Papers

2018 – Assessing the Accuracy of a Two-Dimensional Hydraulic Model for Dambreak Analysis
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Daniel Sheehy, Dr Sharmil Markar, Dr David Newton

Two-dimensional hydraulic modelling technology has advanced significantly in recent years, providing powerful and flexible tools that are now routinely used for a wide variety of flood risk assessments. Assessing the downstream impacts of catastrophic dam failure represents an extreme test for the accuracy and stability of hydraulic models. Catastrophic dam failure can present an extreme risk to downstream infrastructure and public safety. Hence, it is important to have confidence in the estimated magnitude of potential impacts to design suitable, costeffective mitigation measures. The highly visual output of two-dimensional models adds credibility to their results. However, validation data for extreme hydraulic conditions is rarely available, resulting in uncertainty in the accuracy of model predictions and in the risks associated with dam failure. By validating numerical model results against analytical solutions for cases of simple geometry and also against realworld data, an improved level of confidence can be obtained in the accuracy of the model representation of these extreme hydraulic conditions. In this paper, we assessed the capability of the TUFLOW hydraulic modelling software package to accurately simulate an idealised dam break scenario by comparing the model results to analytical solutions. We also compared the model results for coastal inundation by a tsunami to real-world data from the 2004 Banda Ache (Indonesia) tsunami. The results showed that the HPC solver version of TUFLOW correctly captures the dam break flood fronts and the flood wave propagation and TUFLOW HPC is well suited for dam break flood modelling.
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2019 Papers

2019 – Modelling Reservoirs with a 2D Hydraulic Model
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Andrew Northfield, David Stephens, Tim Craig, Mitchell Smith

In recent times two dimensional (2D) hydraulic modelling has become the most common type of modelling for undertaking dambreak assessments. Direct map outputs such as depth and depth-velocity product are very useful in assessing risk across a floodplain. The temporal output from 2D models also enables the tracking of flow across a floodplain, helping practitioners and dam owners alike make informed decisions on warning time and evacuation routes. These outputs form essential input to packages such as HEC-LifeSim an agent-based simulation model for estimating life loss by simulating population redistribution during an evacuation.

A number of investigations have shown the hydraulic model, TUFLOW, is able to simulate the hydraulic conditions expected in a dambreak flood wave, giving confidence in the model’s ability to correctly capture the flood wave propagation. Notwithstanding this ability, there remains uncertainty over the best methodology to adopt when assigning a breach hydrograph to the model and in turn the impact this choice has on assessing downstream populations at risk.

A commonplace method of assigning dam breach hydrographs is to model the reservoir and dam structure with a 1D model or spreadsheet, where the storage is represented with a stage storage relationship and outflow through a time-varying breach is calculated using level-pool routing. The resulting hydrograph is then applied directly to a 2D model immediately downstream of the dam to model the propagation of flow downstream.

An alternative approach consists of representing the entire reservoir, dam and downstream floodplain in the 2D model. This allows for the dynamic effects of bathymetric constrictions in the reservoir to be accounted for which could greatly impact on the timing and shape of the dam breach hydrograph. However, this comes at a cost, as representing the reservoir in 2D requires bathymetry data which can be expensive to capture and also may require a major extension of the model domain.

In this paper the ‘Fully 2D’ and ‘Stage storage relationship 1D/Spreadsheet’ approaches are compared for a number of case studies.
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2021 Papers

2021 – Flood Modelling of Cooma Water Storage Tank Failure
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Meizhiwen Zheng, Nimal Gamage

This study used MIKE 21 to replicate the Cooma tank failure by varying modelling input parameters. This study explores the mechanism by which flood water can damage buildings and investigated different damage category assessment method to predict building damages.
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2013 Papers

2013 – Flooded cars: estimating the consequences to itinerants exposed to dam break floods on roads
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Jamie Campbell, Gregg Barker, Paul Southcott and Michael Wallis

The assessment of consequences of dambreak is used as input to the design parameters of dams, dam safety requirements and dam risk assessments. For many low consequence category dams, the consequences of failure can be dominated by itinerants, in particular vehicles on roads within the dambreak inundation area. Estimating the population at risk (PAR) and potential loss of life (PLL) rigorously is mathematically complex, requires significant user judgment and can be very sensitive to input assumptions. This paper presents a simple, practical tool that has been developed to assist engineers and analysts in assessing the PLL of itinerant road users within a dambreak inundation zone. The tool allows for a logical and defensible analysis based on an event tree approach and provides guidance on appropriate factors to be used in calculating the overall fatality rate of people exposed to the dambreak hazard. This paper details the tool and how to apply it to typical dambreak problems, providing the reader with the information required to estimate the consequences on itinerant road users; the paper also details how the concepts discussed can be applied to other itinerants.
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Search Results: “” — Page 1

Matthew Scorah

Daniel Sheehy, Dr Sharmil Markar, Dr David Newton

Andrew Northfield, David Stephens, Tim Craig, Mitchell Smith