The effect of interactions between failure mechanisms on the reliability of flood defenses

Structural reliability analysis often considers failure mechanisms as correlated but non-interacting processes. Interacting failure mechanisms affect each others performance, and thereby the system reliability. We describe such interactions in the context of flood defenses, and analyze under which conditions such interactions have a large impact...

Improving dike reliability estimates by incorporating construction survival

During construction of a dike, slope stability often reaches critical levels, due to the excess pore water pressures in the foundation. The loading condition during construction has similarities with the design conditions during flood loading. Not only in terms of the pore water pressures as the main driving force, but also in terms of...

Value of information of combinations of proof loading and pore pressure monitoring for flood defences

Spatial variability and limited measurements often result in low reliability estimates of geotechnical failure modes of dikes (i.e., earthen flood defences). Required dike reinforcements are usually not executed within a few years after inception, which enables efforts to improve reliability estimates by reducing uncertainty. Often decision...

Do all dike instabilities cause flooding?

One of the failure mechanisms of dikes is slope instability at the landward side. Often, one instability does not lead to flooding, and several successive instabilities are needed before the dike overtops, and erosion and breaching can occur, especially at lower water levels. In this paper we propose a method to estimate the probability of...

Uncertainty in spatial average undrained shear strength with a site-specific transformation model

Transformation models are used to infer geotechnical properties from indirect measurements. A site-specific transformation model can be calibrated with direct and indirect measurements from a site. When such a model is used, then spatial variability, measurement errors and statistical uncertainty propagate into the uncertainty of the spatial...