The influence of deviating conditions on levee failure rates

This study introduces a method for assessing the annual failure rate of levees based on information from historical floods, while also considering the return period of these past events. Also, an approach has been developed to quantify the influence of deviating conditions on failure rates. The presence of deviating conditions at failed and...

A Bayesian hindcasting method of levee failures applied to the Breitenhagen slope failure

Hindcasting of past levee failures enhances insights in the performance and vulnerability of levees. The scarcity of field evidence makes identifying the cause(s) of failure difficult. Under these circumstances, multiple scenarios and model choices are possible to characterise and to model the failure. This paper shows how probabilistic...

Forensic Analysis of Levee Failures: The Breitenhagen Case

Forensic analysis of past failures is valuable to improve our understanding of levee behavior. In this article a new systematic approach of forensic analysis for levee failures is proposed and applied to the Breitenhagen levee breach that occurred along the river Saale in Germany in 2013. The purpose of this study is to identify the cause of the...

Forensic analyses and hindcasting of the Breitenhagen levee failure

The hindcasting of levee failures can provide valuable information about levee strength, strength models and dominant factors that contribute to failure. It is however not always clear how and why a levee failed as evidence (such as detail subsoil composition) is not present anymore.