Understanding Levee Failures from Historical and Satellite Observations

Flood defense systems are critical in protecting against catastrophic events which often lead to significant damage, fatalities or substantial socio-economic and environmental impact. Even though levees form a significant part of the existing flood defense systems, there is a limited knowledge of the different levee behavior processes and the...

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...

Applicability of satellite radar imaging to monitor the conditions of levees

Levees are critical systems in safeguarding an area against catastrophic flooding events with potential fatalities and economic losses. Current monitoring methods of levees highly rely on expert judgement, resulting in infrequent and subjective assessments of their status. Satellite radar imaging, in particular using interferometry (InSAR),...