Risk-based maintenance and inspection of riverine flood defence systems

The condition of flood defence revetments is influenced by many different degradation processes such as animal burrowing, rutting and growth of weeds. Many of these processes are shock-based rather than progressive continuous. As shocks can cause a drop in performance, this means that the condition of a revetment can suddenly decrease,...

Optimal planning of flood defence system reinforcements using a greedy search algorithm

Climate change and deterioration require a continuous effort to reinforce flood defences and meet reliability requirements. To efficiently upgrade flood defence systems, insight in costs and benefits of measures at a system level is required throughout the process of planning and design. Due to the size of flood defence systems the number of...

Accuracy of visual inspection of flood defences

Prioritisation of flood defence maintenance is typically based on visual inspection. However, literature shows that the Probability of Detection (PoD) of visual inspection can vary significantly. Here we investigate the PoD for visual inspections of flood defence structures, the consistency of damage classification, and the influence 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...