Print Email Facebook Twitter Towards an International Levee Performance Database (ILPD) and Its Use for Macro-Scale Analysis of Levee Breaches and Failures Title Towards an International Levee Performance Database (ILPD) and Its Use for Macro-Scale Analysis of Levee Breaches and Failures Author Özer, I.E. (TU Delft Hydraulic Structures and Flood Risk) van Damme, M. (TU Delft Hydraulic Structures and Flood Risk) Jonkman, Sebastiaan N. (TU Delft Hydraulic Structures and Flood Risk) Date 2019 Abstract Understanding levee failures can be significantly improved by analysing historical failures, experiments and performance observations. Individual efforts have been undertaken to document flood defence failures but no systematically gathered large scale, open access dataset is currently available for thorough scientific research. Here, we introduce an efficiently structured, global database, called International Levee Performance Database (ILPD), which aims to become a valuable knowledge platform in the field of levee safety. It comprises information on levee characteristics, failure mechanisms, geotechnical investigations and breach processes for more than 1500 cases (October 2019). We provide a macro-scale analysis of the available data, aiming to provide insights on levee behaviour based on historical records. We outline common failure mechanisms of which external erosion is identified as the most frequent for levees. As an example, we investigate flood events occurred in Germany (2002, 2013) and examine breach characteristics of hundreds of failures. It is found that initial failure mechanisms have an influence on breach characteristics and that failures due to instability and internal erosion are less frequent but lead to larger breaches. Moreover, a relation between the return period and the expected breach density during a flood event is identified. These insights could complement flood risk assessments. Subject levee failuresdatabaseflood riskflood defenceslevee breach To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:2a18baad-fe01-452e-9309-1b99d74901dd DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/w12010119 ISSN 2073-4441 Source Water, 12 (1) Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights © 2019 I.E. Özer, M. van Damme, Sebastiaan N. Jonkman Files PDF water_12_00119.pdf 4.53 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:2a18baad-fe01-452e-9309-1b99d74901dd/datastream/OBJ/view