Decisions on life-cycle reliability of flood defence systems

Abstract

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 flood defence assets. This is a continuous effort of planning, executing and evaluating a variety of different system interventions. These can be aimed at both reducing the uncertainty on (e.g., inspection or monitoring), or improving the performance of a flood defence system (e.g., reinforcement). Performance is typically expressed as the reliability on a system level, which in this thesis is interpreted as the life-cycle reliability: the estimated reliability with all foreseen interventions in time. The key objective of this thesis is to improve decisions on life-cycle reliability of flood defence systems. This is elaborated for three key topics, with a focus on earthen flood defences (also known as levees or dikes)...