A Guide to Breach Prediction

Abstract

Executive summaryEarthen embankments that are categorised as large (15m or greater in height) number in the tens of thousands globally. Embankment dam risk assessment is a vital measure that has been adopted throughout the industry to assess the potential impact that catastrophic dam failures can carry. A critical part of this assessment is the prediction of the breach process, which will determine the reservoir outflow hydrograph. This is crucial for the following stage of flood routing, which aids in flood risk assessment, evacuation planning and land-use planning.This report provides details of the breach prediction methods available to users, ranging from simple parametric equations to complex multi-dimensional erosion models. These are commonly divided into three categories; parametric models, semi-physically based models and physically based models.

Comparative analysis of flood wave modelling methodologies for reservoir failure based on structure from motion

“…They reported that Von Thun and Gillette (1990) obtained the lowest estimates and Froehlich (1995) and Froehlich (2008) the highest estimates for breach development time. In a separate evaluation, West et al (2018) assessed the prediction accuracy of these models for three dam failure cases and reported that Froehlich (2008) had the highest accuracy in estimation. Therefore, this study used the Froehlich (2008) model to estimate of the breach development time of Mowon Reservoir, which was found to be 0.024 seconds.…”

The International Hybrid Conference on Contingency Planning and Adaptive Urbanism (CPAU)

“…Third approach is the semi-physically based models, which uses breach geometry and/or the erosion rates to produce flow hydrogrph during dams breaching. Last approach is the physically based models, these tools produces outflow hydrographs in high accuracy but with long processing time (West et al, 2018). Among all available dam breach analysis approaches, the semi-physically approach is selected for this study, we need the whole hydrograph due to overtopping as well as piping failure breaches for earthen dams.…”

Recent technological and methodological advances for the investigation of landslide dams

“…the Hsiaolin village landslide dam (Dong et al, 2011a;Li et al, 2011;Lo et al, 2011) and the Tangjiashan landslide dam (Fan et al, 2012a;Liu et al, 2012;Wang et al, 2015). Recently, EMBREA, another evolution of a breach model named HR-BREACH originally made for manmade embankments, was improved to be used for natural/landslide dams (Davison et al, 2013;Lumbroso et al, 2020;Morris et al, 2018;Morris et al, 2020;Morris, 2013;Říha et al, 2020;Zhu et al, 2019).…”