A non-traditional approach to the analysis of flood hazard for dams

The traditional and still prevailing approach to characterization of flood hazards to dams is the inflow design flood (IDF). The IDF, defined either deterministically or probabilistically, is necessary for sizing a dam, its discharge facilities and reservoir storage. However, within the dam safety risk informed decision framework, the IDF does not carry much relevance, no matter how accurately it is characterized. In many cases, the probability of the reservoir inflow tells us little about the probability of dam overtopping. Typically, the reservoir inflow and its associated probability of occurrence is modified by the interplay of a number of factors (reservoir storage, reservoir operating rules and various operational faults and natural disturbances) on its way to becoming the reservoir outflow and corresponding peak level—the two parameters that represent hydrologic hazard acting upon the dam. To properly manage flood risk, it is essential to change approach to flood hazard analysis for dam safety from the currently prevailing focus on reservoir inflows and instead focus on reservoir outflows and corresponding reservoir levels. To demonstrate these points, this paper presents stochastic simulation of floods on a cascade system of three dams and shows progression from exceedance probabilities of reservoir inflow to exceedance probabilities of peak reservoir level depending on initial reservoir level, storage availability, reservoir operating rules and availability of discharge facilities on demand. The results show that the dam overtopping is more likely to be caused by a combination of a smaller flood and a system component failure than by an extreme flood on its own.