Optimal system safety targets: Incorporating hydrodynamic interactions in an economic cost-benefit analysis for flood defence systems

Historically, people in flood-prone areas world-wide have (to a certain degree) accepted the risk of being flooded because of the benefits that flood-prone areas can provide; examples of such benefits are rich agricultural lands or trade advantages. Acceptance and benefits notwithstanding, people living in flood-prone areas have tried, and will...

Towards an International Levee Performance Database (ILPD) and Its Use for Macro-Scale Analysis of Levee Breaches and Failures

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...

Reconnaissance Level Studies on a Storm Surge Barrier for Flood Risk Reduction in the Houston-Galveston Bay

The Houston - Galveston area is at significant risk from hurricane induced storm surges. This paper summarizes ongoing studies on flood risk reduction for the region. Firstly, based on a simplified probabilistic hurricane surge model , the return periods of surges within the bay have been estimated. This model framework can be used to assess the...

River System Behaviour Effects on Flood Risk

A risk-based safety approach is indispensable to support decision-making on flood protection strategies and measures. Hitherto the effects of river system behaviour on flood risk have usually been neglected. River system behaviour refers to the fact that the flood risk (or safety) of a particular area may depend on the safety of other adjoining...