Decisions on life-cycle reliability of flood defence systems

Many countries rely on flood defence systems to prevent economic damage and loss-of-life due to catastrophic floods. Asset managers of flood defence systems need to cope with the consequences of structural degradation, and changing societal and environmental conditions, in order to satisfy performance requirements and optimize societal value of...

Storyline: Proof loading and monitoring to optimise flood defence asset management

Project Summary A1 - Life-Cycle Performance: Methods to align dike inspection, maintenance and reinforcement

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...

Adaptive asset management for flood protection: The FAIR framework in action

Uncertainties about climate change consequences, changing societal requirements and system complexity require flood protection asset managers to continuously evaluate their asset management policies and practice to manage risk and improve the resilience of their assets. However, there are many challenges in doing this, with asset operators...

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...

Influence of Monitoring on Investment Planning of Flood Defence Systems

Many flood defences in the Netherlands will have to be reinforced in the coming decades. Many dikes do not fulfill the safety standard due to geotechnical failure modes, largely due to epistemic, reducible uncertainties. . The Value of Information is a measure to indicate beforehand whether an investment towards reducing epistemic uncertainty is...

Value of Information of Structural Health Monitoring in Asset Management of Flood Defences

One of the most rapidly emerging measures in infrastructure asset management is Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), which aims at reducing uncertainty in structural performance by using monitoring equipment. As earthen flood defence structures typically have large strength uncertainties, such techniques can be particularly promising. However,...

Large scale flood hazard analysis by including defence failures on the Dutch river system

To make informed flood risk management (FRM) decisions in large protected river systems, flood risk and hazard analyses should include the potential for dike breaching. 'Load interdependency' analyses attempt to include the system-wide effects of dike breaching while accounting for the uncertainty of both river loads and dike fragility. The...

A framework for assessing information quality in asset management of flood defences

For asset management of flood defences a pivotal aspect is the quality and accessibility of available data and information. In the management of flood defences inThe Netherlands, safety assessments are conducted every twelve years. To assure the quality and consistency of these safety assessments, flood defence engineers have to make use of a...

Case studies for quantifying the value of structural health monitoring information: Lessons learnt

This paper provides an overview, insights, results and a classification related to development and analyses of case studies within the scientific networking project COST Action TU1402 on the value of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) information. With an outline of the framework and approaches, a procedure on how to quantify the value of SHM...

Impact of including interdependencies between multiple riverine flood defences on the economically optimal flood safety levels

In risk analysis of riverine flood defence systems, sections of flood defences are often considered separately, herewith ignoring their interdependence, e.g. due to the hydraulic response following dike breaches in the system. In previous studies it has been found that such interdependence can have a significant influence on flood risk estimates...

Risk based inspection of flood defence dams: An application to grass revetments

In The Netherlands, inspection and maintenance are essential for maintaining stringent flood protection standards. Flood defences are assessed every 12 years to ensure they meet their risk-based safety standards,which are given as legally-binding maximum failure probabilities. Between assessments, flood defence managers are subject to risk...

Developments in the management of flood defences and hydraulic infrastructure in the Netherlands

This article highlights recent developments in flood risk management in the Netherlands and presents approaches for reliability analysis and asset management for flood defences and hydraulic infrastructure. The functioning of this infrastructure is of great importance for the country as large parts of it are prone to flooding. Based on a...

Influence of load interdependencies of flood defences on probabilities and risks at the Bovenrijn/IJssel area, The Netherlands

In the Netherlands, flood risk analysis is usually carried out for a location, without considering potential flood defence failures in upstream areas. This may result in significant over- or underestimation of flood risks. The effect of upstream failures on failure probabilities and flood risks in other areas is called load interdependence of...