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Simon Lang, Chriselyn Meneses, Kelly Maslin, Mark Arnold

It is now common practice for dam owners in Australia to take a risk based approach to managing the safety of their large dams. Some dam owners are also using risk based approaches to manage other significant assets. For example, Melbourne Water manage the safety of their retarding basins in a manner similar to their water supply dams.
Assessing the risks posed by retarding basins using methods developed for larger dams can raise challenges. For example, the Graham (1999) approach to estimating potential loss of life (PLL) is generally applied when estimating the consequences of dam failure. However, Graham (1999) may not be the most suitable model for estimating PLL downstream of structures with relatively low heights and storage volumes (e.g. retarding basins), given the characteristics of the case histories used to develop the method.
In this paper six potential methods for estimating PLL are tested on four retarding basins in Melbourne. The methods are Graham (1999), the new Reclamation Consequence Estimating Methodology (RCEM), the UK risk assessment for reservoir safety (RARS) method, a spreadsheet application of HEC-FIA 3.0, and empirical methods developed by Jonkman (2007) and Jonkman et al. (2009). Results from the methods are compared, and comment is made about which is most suitable.
Keywords: potential loss of life, dam safety, risk analysis, retarding basins.

Now showing 1–12 of 14 search results:

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2015 Papers

2015 – Estimating potential loss of life downstream of retarding basins
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Simon Lang, Chriselyn Meneses, Kelly Maslin, Mark Arnold

It is now common practice for dam owners in Australia to take a risk based approach to managing the safety of their large dams. Some dam owners are also using risk based approaches to manage other significant assets. For example, Melbourne Water manage the safety of their retarding basins in a manner similar to their water supply dams.
Assessing the risks posed by retarding basins using methods developed for larger dams can raise challenges. For example, the Graham (1999) approach to estimating potential loss of life (PLL) is generally applied when estimating the consequences of dam failure. However, Graham (1999) may not be the most suitable model for estimating PLL downstream of structures with relatively low heights and storage volumes (e.g. retarding basins), given the characteristics of the case histories used to develop the method.
In this paper six potential methods for estimating PLL are tested on four retarding basins in Melbourne. The methods are Graham (1999), the new Reclamation Consequence Estimating Methodology (RCEM), the UK risk assessment for reservoir safety (RARS) method, a spreadsheet application of HEC-FIA 3.0, and empirical methods developed by Jonkman (2007) and Jonkman et al. (2009). Results from the methods are compared, and comment is made about which is most suitable.
Keywords: potential loss of life, dam safety, risk analysis, retarding basins.
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2015 Papers

2015 – Estimation of Seismic Hazard for Dams with a Consistent Risk Approach
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Maz Mahzari and Chi-Fai Wan

Upgrading of an existing dam often faces challenges in both static and seismic safety assessment. The use of new hydrological and seismological data and improved design methods often mean more severe loading which outdates the original design and demands expensive upgrade works. Establishing the design criteria for checking the structural adequacy of an existing dam for multiple unusual load events occurring within a relatively short time frame presents another challenge.
A probabilistic approach is presented to rigorously address the effects of multiple load events while maintaining a consistent risk of failure for the structure. This is based on a probabilistic conditional combination where probability of each event is defined and used to develop a joint probability distribution. For instance if an earthquake occurs following a severe flood, the seismic hazard curve of the site can be used to adjust the seismic loading with shorter average recurrence interval to be used in conjunction with the pre-earthquake flood when assessing the structural adequacy of the dam. With this method of adjustment, the design can benefit from the choice of a reduced seismic design loading and hence a more cost effective design solution.
The proposed method is straightforward and can be effectively used in most engineering practices, including the design of hydraulic structures such as dams.
Keywords: Dams, Seismic Hazard, Post-earthquake, Risk analysis
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2015 Papers

2015 – Towards consistency in potential loss of life estimates: Testing the new Reclamation Consequence Estimating Methodology
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Chriselyn Meneses, Simon Lang, Peter Hill, Mark Arnold

Risk is the product of likelihood and consequences. Much effort is put into the risk assessment process for large dams to ensure there is a consistent approach to estimating failure likelihoods across an owner’s portfolio. For example, the use of common peer review teams and methods like the ‘piping toolbox’ allow the risk assessment team to apply repeatable logic and processes when estimating failure likelihoods. However, the methods for estimating life safety consequences are often not applied consistently. This inconsistency leads to estimates of potential loss of life (PLL) that vary between dams in unexpected ways, because results from the most commonly applied method (Graham, 1999) are sensitive to threshold changes in flood severity and dam failure warning time.
The recently released Reclamation Consequence Estimating Methodology (RCEM) is intended to supersede Graham (1999). RCEM varies fatality rates continuously with DV, and is therefore less sensitive to changes in flood severity. In this paper, estimates of PLL from RCEM are compared with results from Graham (1999) for five dams. Results from the latest US Army Corps of Engineers model for estimating the consequences of dam failure (HEC-FIA 3.0) are also compared with RCEM and Graham (1999) for one dam. Comment is then made about the important considerations for applying RCEM consistently across a portfolio of dams.
Keywords: potential loss of life, dam safety, risk analysis
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2016 Papers

2016 – Warning and Mobilization of Populations at Risk of Dam Failure
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Jason Needham, John Sorensen, Dennis Mileti, Simon Lang

The potential loss of life from floods, including those caused by dam failure, is sensitive to assumptions about warning and evacuation of the population at risk. Therefore, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers engaged with social scientists to better understand the process of warning and mobilizing communities that experience severe flooding. This improved understanding enables dam owners to better assess the existing risk posed by their assets and investigate non-structural risk reduction measures alongside structural upgrades.

In this paper, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers research is summarised to provide general guidance on the warning and mobilization of populations at risk for practitioners assessing the potential loss of life from dam failure. This includes commentary and quantification of three primary timeframes: warning issuance delay, warning diffusion, and protective action initiation. A questionnaire for estimating these parameters is also introduced, alongside a case study application for an Australian dam.

This paper also summarises the current understanding of how to reduce delays in determining when to issue warnings, increase speed at which warnings spread through communities, and decrease the time people spend before taking the recommended protective action. These insights will help all people involved with emergency management, including those tasked with developing Dam Safety Emergency Plans.
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2017 Papers

2017 – Observations from Five Australian Applications of HEC-LifeSim to Estimate Potential Loss of Life from Dam Failure
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Chriselyn Kavanagh, Simon Lang, Andrew Northfield, Peter Hill

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have recently releasedHEC-LifeSim1.0, a dynamic simulation model for estimating life loss from severe flooding (Fields, 2016). In contrast to the empirical models that are often used to estimate life loss from dam failure, HEC-LifeSim explicitly models the warning and mobilisation of the population at risk, and predicts the spatial distribution of fatalities across the structures and transport networks expected to be inundated. This capability provides additional insights to dam owners that can be used to better understand and reduce the life safety risks posed by large dams. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of HEC-LifeSim to model the potential loss of life from failure of five large Australian dams. Particular attention is paid to how the predicted life loss varies with warning time, in a manner that depends on human response and the transport network’s capacity for mass evacuations, and the modelled severity of flooding. We also examine how the HEC-LifeSim estimates of life loss compare with those from the empirical Reclamation Consequence Estimating Methodology (RCEM).
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2018 Papers

2018 – Current Australian and International Practices for Dam Failure Consequence Assessments
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Simon Lang

Many Australian and international dam owners use risk assessments to understand and manage the societal risks posed by their dams. This requires estimates of dam failure consequences, particularly the potential loss of life (PLL). The methods used to assess PLL have become more varied and sophisticated in recent times. This paper summarises the current status of the methods most relevant to the Australian dams industry (i.e. RCEM, HEC-LifeSim, the Life Safety Model), and comments on their applicability for Australian PLL assessments. This commentary is based on material presented by dam owners, regulators, researchers and consultants from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and the Netherlands, at workshops on estimating dam failure consequences held in Denver in 2016 and Toronto in 2018.
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2014 Papers

2014 – Do You Really Know/Understand Your Assets’ Risk?
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Leonard Wiliem, Rob Keogh, and David Thomas

Progressive rope creep on the steel ropes which hold 14 counterweights in tension on the seven spillway gates was monitored regularly. The 2011 annual inspection identified that the creep had taken the lower guide wheels of the suspended counterweights beyond the extent of the wheel guides.
A programed project to extend the guides was delayed due to Workplace Health and Safety concerns on confined access and working under a suspended load. A study was commissioned to deliver a safe method of extending the guides. Because regular testing and two flood events had proved the gates were functioning well, the risk of failure in gate operation during flood event was considered low and a lower priority was assigned to rectification work.
Callide Dam is a SunWater owned dam located in Central Queensland. It has a similar spillway gate mechanism as Coolmunda Dam. The only difference is that Callide Dam gates work in pairs with one counterweight attached to each gate.
In January 2013 due to heavy rainfall caused by the ex-cyclone Oswald, Callide Dam experienced a flood event which triggered a gate operation. During the draining phase, the gates operated abnormally sustaining damage to the structure and to the automatic gate opening mechanism. SunWater undertook investigations to identify the cause of the abnormal operation and found that the primary cause of the gate abnormal operation was due to jamming of the suspended counterweight on the end of the guides. This was due to cable stretched over 26 years of service to the extent that the lower wheel assembly was beyond the guide rails at the time of the flood event.
The event at Callide Dam was a wake up call for SunWater to re-evaluate the risk assessment for Coolmunda Dam. This re-evaluation recommended to assign the highest priority on the rectification of the wire rope creep issue on the radial gate as the risk of failure in gate operation during flood event was high.
This paper discusses the actions in re-evaluating the risks at SunWater’s Coolmunda Dam and the measures taken to quickly undertake remedial action on both dams and the challenges involved with each.
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2013 Papers

2013 – Case study of risk assessment for dam safety management decision-making in Korea
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Jeong Yeul, Lim

For various historical reasons and some technical reasons, the safety of dams has been evaluated using an engineering standards-based approach, which was developed over many years. It was used initially for the design of new dams, but increasingly has been applied over the past few decades to assess the safety of existing dams. Some countries have carried out risk assessments of existing dams that included both the structural and hydraulic safety of the dam and social risk. These methods developed by other countries could be adapted to assist in decision-making for dam safety management. Unfortunately, methods for risk assessment of dams were not established in Korea. This study outlines a beginning risk analysis for structural safety management. The first stage consisted of research on the present domestic dam safety guidelines and reviewing operations for management systems of dam safety abroad. Also, dam risk analysis requires reliable data on dam failure, past construction history and management records of existing dams. A suitable risk analysis method of dams for structural safety management in Korea is use of event tree, fault tree and conditioning indexes methods. A pilot risk assessment was carried out for two dams. The dam risk assessment process was thus established, and we learned the importance of risk assessment. The future includes additional research and risk analysis to develop the system.
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2013 Papers

2013 – Maroon Dam: A multi-analytical approach for a multi-purpose dam
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Iain Lonie, Malcolm Barker and Colin Thompson

Consideration of flood mitigation benefits, water supply, irrigation and recreational usage played an instrumental role in developing the proposed upgrade for Maroon Dam to meet dam safety and flood capacity requirements. Maroon Dam is a 47.4 m high zoned earthfill dam completed in 1974. The dam is a multi-purpose reservoir which is now owned and operated by Seqwater and plays an important role in the local community. Key drivers for the proposed upgrade design included embankment stability, foundation concerns, piping, spillway capacity and erosion of the embankment toe.
Six options were reduced to three through a high level screening exercise. A more detailed assessment of the remaining options was undertaken using a Multi Criteria Analysis and a detailed risk assessment. Consideration of the competing uses of the reservoir was critical in the development and assessment of the preferred option. This paper will present the details of the analytical methods used as input for the Multi Criteria Analysis and the detailed risk assessment for the final proposed design option that will meet the requirements of dam safety and flood capacity without impacting on water supply, irrigation and recreational usage.
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2012 Papers

2012 – Estimating potential loss of life from dam failure in the digital age
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Simon Lang, Peter Hill, Wayne Graham

The empirical method developed by Graham (1999) is the most widely used in Australia to estimate potential loss of life from dam failure. It is likely to remain that way while spatially based dynamic simulation models are not publicly available (e.g. LIFESim, HEC-FIA and LSM). When the Graham (1999) approach was first developed the prevalence of spatial data and the speed of computers was much less. In addition, most people did not have mobile phones, social media was in its infancy, and automatic emergency alert telephone systems were 10 years from being used in Australia. Graham (1999) was intended to be applied to populations at risk (PAR) lumped into a discrete number of reaches. The selection of fatality rates for the PAR in each reach was based on average flood severity and dam failure warning times. Today, there is typically much more spatially distributed data available to those doing dam failure consequence assessments. Often a property database is available that identifies the location of each individual building where PAR may be, along with estimates of flood depths and velocities at those buildings. News of severe flooding is likely to be circulated by Facebook, Twitter and e-mail, in conjunction with official warnings provided by emergency agencies through radio and television and emergency alert telephone systems.
This raises the question of how Graham (1999) is best applied in today’s digital age. This paper explores some of the issues, including the estimation of dam failure warning time, using Graham (1999) to estimate loss of life in individual buildings and the suitability of Graham (1999) for estimating loss of life for very large PAR.
Keywords: loss of life, dam safety, risk analysis.
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2008 Papers

2008 – Probabilistic Description of Scour Hole Downstream of Flip Bucket Spillway of Large Dams
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G. Shams Ghahfarokhi, PHAJM van Gelder, JK Vrijling

Abstract: Risk and reliability analysis is presently being performed in almost all fields of engineering depending upon the specific field and its particular area. Probabilistic risk analysis (PRA), also called quantitative risk analysis (QRA) is a central feature of hydraulic engineering structural design.

Actually, probabilistic methods, which consider resistance and load parameters as random variables, are more suitable than conventional deterministic methods to determine the safety level of a hydraulic structure. In fact, hydraulic variables involved in plunge pools, such as discharge, flow depth, and velocity, are stochastic in nature, which may be represented by relevant probability distributions. Therefore, the optimal design of a plunge pool needs to be modelled by probabilistic methods.

The main topic of this paper is concerned with the reliability-based assessment of the geometry of the plunge pool downstream of a ski jump bucket. Experimental data obtained from a model of a flip bucket spillway has been used to develop a number of equations for the prediction of scour geometry downstream from a flip bucket spillway of a large dam structure. The accuracy of the developed equations was examined both through statistical and experimental procedures with satisfactory results. In addition, reliability computations have been carried out using the Monte Carlo technique.

The main conclusions are that structural reliability analysis can be used as a tool in the dam safety risk management process and that the most important factors for further analysis are erosion, friction coefficient, uplift and self-weight.

Keywords: risk analysis, reliability, plunge pool, Monte Carlo simulation, flip bucket, large dams
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2008 Papers

2008 – Best practices in dam safety risk analysis at the Bureau of Reclamation
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Gregg A Scott

Abstract: The Bureau of Reclamation has been performing quantitative risk analysis as the primary dam safety decision making tool for well over a decade. This paper summarizes some of the key concepts and basic methodology currently used in the dam safety risk analysis process at Reclamation.

Keywords: dam safety, risk analysis, reliability analysis, event trees, subjective probability.
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2008 Papers

2008 – Risk assessment with uncertainty analysis for an already-initiated failure mode
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David S Bowles, Sanjay S Chauhan, Loren R Anderson, Terry F Glover

Abstract: A nested model is presented for considering variability and knowledge uncertainty in a dam safety risk assessment of an existing dam and interim risk-reduction alternatives (operating restrictions) during the staged implementation of a permanent structural risk reduction measure. The effects of some important aspects of natural variabilities on estimated risks are represented as cumulative distributions of probability of failure, annualised life loss, economic risk cost, and an F-N representation of life loss. Many cumulative distributions are generated to represent the effects of some important aspects of knowledge uncertainties.

An important aspect of the knowledge uncertainty is the current level of development of an already-initiated piping failure mode. Also, an approach to conditioning the system response probabilities (SRPs) for the piping failure mode on the duration of reservoir pool exceedance is included in the failure event tree risk model.

ANCOLD and Reclamation tolerable risk guidelines are evaluated at selected percentiles of variability and percentiles (levels of confidence) of knowledge uncertainty. The incremental cost-per-statistical-life saved and benefit-cost ratio for interim risk-reduction alternatives are estimated and evaluated to examine the case for more-severe levels of operating restriction than the least-severe operating restriction that is estimated to satisfy, at a selected percentile of variability and a desired level of confidence, the limit values in all of the tolerable risk guidelines that were considered.

Keywords: Dam safety, risk analysis, risk assessment, uncertainty analysis, aleatory uncertainty, epistemic uncertainty.
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2011 Papers

2011 – Comparing methods for estimating loss of life from dambreak flooding for two Australian dams
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Simon Lang, Chriselyn Meneses, Peter Hill, Kristen Sih

In Australia to date, the empirical method developed by Graham (1999) is the most widely applied approach for estimating loss of life from dambreak flooding. However, as the move to risk-based approaches of dam safety management has gathered momentum internationally, increasingly sophisticated techniques for estimating loss of life have emerged. One of these models is the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) HEC-FIA model. HEC-FIA models the influence of flooding, structure characteristics, and warning and evacuation assumptions on loss of life in a spatially distributed manner. In contrast to Graham (1999), HEC-FIA also allows the user to model the loss of life for both dambreak and natural flooding.

This paper presents the results from the first Australian application of HEC-FIA to two dams in southeast Australia. The application of empirical methods developed by Graham (2004) and Reiter (2001) is also discussed.

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Simon Lang