Intends to assist the dam owner in evaluating the needs for dam safety improvement, selecting and prioritizing remedial and corrective actions, and improving the operation, maintenance and surveillance procedures. This book is intended not only for industry specialists but also for readers outside the dam engineering community.

Water engineers require knowledge of stochastic, frequency concepts, uncertainty analysis, risk assessment, and the processes that predict unexpected events. This book presents the basics of stochastic, risk and uncertainty analysis, and random sampling techniques in conjunction with straightforward examples which are solved step by step. In addition, appropriate Excel functions are included as an alternative to solve the examples, and two real case studies is presented in the last chapters of book.

More than 800,000 dams and thousands of kilometers of dikes have been constructed around the world. These structures are often designed based on a statistical analysis of the discharge distribution in rivers. However, the history of construction of dams and dikes coexists with the history of failures. Hundreds of dam failure events were reported worldwide in the previous century, while every year dikes breach due to high flows in the rivers or for other reasons leading sometimes to catastrophic consequences. In this book a description is presented of a framework and techniques for modelling structure failure events as well as a proposal to several novel approaches for risk analysis and assessment by numerical, statistical and constrained based methods in particular to the problems of breach modelling and flood water mitigation.

This volume provides an introduction for flood risk management practitioners, up-to-date methods for analysis of uncertainty and its use in risk-based decision making. It addresses decision making for both short-term (real-time forecasting) and long-term (flood risk planning under change) situations. It aims primarily at technical practitioners involved in flood risk analysis and flood warning, including hydrologists, engineers, flood modelers, risk analysts and those involved in the design and operation of flood warning systems. Many experienced practitioners are now expected to modify their way of working to fit into the new philosophy of flood risk management. This volume helps them to undertake that task with appropriate attention to the surrounding uncertainties. The book will also interest and benefit researchers and graduate students hoping to improve their knowledge of modern uncertainty analysis.

This book offers a timely report on methods for risk assessment procedures for dams, with a special emphasis on dams with small storage dimensions. It starts by introducing all important definitions relating to dams, dam safety, such as the most common failure modes, and risks. In turn, it describes in detail the most important evaluation procedures for various failure modes such as piping, flood, earthquake and stability are described in this chapter. Consequence assessment procedures, together with the different steps of the risk evaluation process, are analyzed, providing a guide on how to identify the appropriate failure mode for the examined dam and setting up the appropriate safety plan. The book introduces the most common methods for predicting peak breach discharge, analyzing some relevant case studies. Upon comparing the findings obtained with the different methods, the book concludes with some general suggestions and ideas for future developments. This book fills an important gap between theoretical works and real-life problems being investigating in practical research studies on dam safety and risk management. It provides readers with the necessary knowledge on risk analysis and shows how to apply this in practice to carry out dam safety studies. It offers practical guidelines to set up risk assessment procedures for different failure modes and predicting failure parameters such as failure time, peak breach discharge and breach width.

This book offers the state of the art on risk analysis, representing a primary tool for achieving effective management of critical infrastructures along with a suitable framework for the development of risk management models regarding natural, technological and human-induced hazards. Essential reading for graduate students and researchers interested in risk analysis as applied to all type of critical infrastructures, and for designers, engineers, owners and operators of critical infrastructures in general and dams in particular.