Modelling the Brumadinho tailings dam failure, the subsequent loss of life and how it could have been reduced

Lumbroso, D.; Davison, Mark; Body, Richard; Petkovšek, Gregor

doi:10.5194/nhess-21-21-2021

Cited by 43 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Therefore, this model used the "do not bulk" function in HEC-RAS, while the HEC-RAS bulked the clear water hydrographs during the simulation in the Santa Barbara models, based on the C v . The volumetric concentration (28% solids) in Lumbroso et al's (2021) [20] study was lower than Robertson et al's (2019) [3], who reported that ~50% of impoundment was saturated voids and ~58% (7 of the total 12 million m 3 released) of the debris materials were solids. However, because this model used constant Bingham parameters (instead of Julien's (1995) concentration-dependent equations) and the hydrograph included the mud volume, the HEC-RAS simulation was not sensitive to the volumetric concentration selected.…”

Section: Brumadinho Model Model Parameters and Input Data: Brumadinhomentioning

confidence: 58%

“…Given the high void ratio, Robertson et al (2019) [3] estimated that 5 million m 3 of the total 12 million m 3 impoundment was water. Lumbroso et al (2021) [20] developed a mixed-material breach hydrograph with Roberson et al's (2019) [3] volume estimates and two-fluid EMBREA-MUD simulations (Figure 1b). They estimated that the event reached a peak mudflow rate of 90,000 cms within 5 s of the failure and gave the mixed-material hydrograph a "stepped" structure based on video evidence of progressive failure and mudflow velocities.…”

Section: Brumadinho Mine Tailings Dam Failurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whereas the initial Santa Barbara simulations evaluated the model with a priori, bestestimate, uncalibrated parameters, the Brumadinho model used the calibrated parameters from Lumbroso et al's (2021) [20] Mike 21 model. This allowed the study team to evaluate the model structure by comparing HEC-RAS to another model, in addition to the event itself.…”

Section: Brumadinho Model Model Parameters and Input Data: Brumadinhomentioning

confidence: 99%

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Prototype Scale Evaluation of Non-Newtonian Algorithms in HEC-RAS: Mud and Debris Flow Case Studies of Santa Barbara and Brumadinho

et al. 2022

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The Santa Barbara post-wildfire debris flows and the Brumadinho tailing-dam failure were two of the most catastrophic flood events of the late 2010s. Both these events carried so much solid-phase material, that classic, clear-water, flood risk approaches cannot replicate them, or forecast other events like them. This case study applied the new non-Newtonian features in HEC-RAS 6.1 to these two events, testing the most widely used flood risk model on the two most common mud and debris flow hazards (post-wildfire floods and mine tailing dam failures). HEC-RAS reproduced the inundation boundaries and the event timing (where available) for both events. The ratio between the largest debris flow clasts and the channel size, parametric trade-offs, the “convex” alluvial plain topography, and the stochasticity introduced by urban infrastructure made the Santa Barbara modeling more difficult and less precise than Brumadinho. Despite these challenges, the results provide prototype scale validation and verification of these new tools in this widely applied flood risk model.

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Section: Brumadinho Model Model Parameters and Input Data: Brumadinhomentioning

confidence: 58%

Section: Brumadinho Mine Tailings Dam Failurementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Brumadinho Model Model Parameters and Input Data: Brumadinhomentioning

confidence: 99%

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Prototype Scale Evaluation of Non-Newtonian Algorithms in HEC-RAS: Mud and Debris Flow Case Studies of Santa Barbara and Brumadinho

et al. 2022

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“…The 86 m height tailings dam, constructed with the upstream method, catastrophically failed, releasing 12 million m 3 of mineral waste. Catastrophic failures at Samarco and Brumadinho in 2015 and 2019, respectively, brought mine tailings disasters onto the global level in unprecedented ways, and several studies have developed these themes following these events (e.g., [6,[11][12][13][14][15][16]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracking Deformation Processes at the Legnica Glogow Copper District (Poland) by Satellite InSAR—II: Żelazny Most Tailings Dam

Antonielli

Sciortino

Scancella³

et al. 2021

Land

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The failures of tailings dams have a major negative impact on the economy, surrounding properties, and people’s lives, and therefore the monitoring of these facilities is crucial to mitigate the risk of failure, but this can be challenging due to their size and inaccessibility. In this work, the deformation processes at Żelazny Most tailings dam (Poland) were analyzed using satellite Ad-vanced Differential SAR Interferometry (A-DInSAR) from October 2014 to April 2019, showing that the dam is affected by both settlements (with a maximum rate of 30 mm/yr), and horizontal sliding in radial direction with respect to the ponds. The load of the tailings is pushing the dam forward along the glacio-tectonic shear planes located at depth, in the Pliocene clays, causing horizontal displacements at a rate up to 30 mm/yr, which could lead to a passive failure of the dam. The measured displacements have been compared with the ones observed by in situ data from the 90s to 2013, available in the literature. The outcomes indicate that intense localized deformations occur in the eastern and northern sectors of the dam, while the western sector is deforming evenly. Moreover, although the horizontal deformation had a slowdown from 2010 until 2013, it continued in 2014 to 2019 with recovered intensity. The upper and the recent embankments are affected by major settlements, possibly due to a lower consolidation degree of the most recent tailings and a larger thickness of compressible materials.

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“…Liu et al [31] designed a cell-based network model to gain deep insights into staged evacuation features. Many evacuation studies, however, have focused solely on either hard infrastructure or institutional arrangements though there are some models, such as the Life Safety Model (LSM), which incorporate both sides (please refer to Refs [24][25][26][36][37][38][39]). Addressing the interplay between efficiency and fairness in urban flood evacuation requires an approach that integrates both the hard infrastructural and institutional aspects of the problem.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficiency-fairness trade-offs in evacuation management of urban floods: The effects of the shelter capacity and zone prioritization

Muneepeerakul

2021

PLoS ONE

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With increasing flood risk, evacuation has become an important research topic in urban flood management. Urban flood evacuation is a complex problem due to i) the complex interactions among several components within a city and ii) the need to consider multiple, often competing, dimensions/objectives in evacuation analysis. In this study, we focused on the interplay between two such objectives: efficiency and fairness. We captured the evacuation process in a conceptual agent-based model (ABM), which was analyzed under different hard infrastructure and institutional arrangement conditions, namely, various shelter capacity distributions as a hard infrastructure property and simultaneous/staged evacuation as an institutional arrangement. Efficiency was measured as the time it takes for a person to evacuate to safety. Fairness was defined by how equally residents suffered from floods, and the level of suffering depended on the perceived risk and evacuation time. Our findings suggested that efficiency is more sensitive to the shelter capacity distribution, while fairness changes more notably according to the evacuation priority assigned to the divided zones in staged evacuation. Simultaneous evacuation generally tended to be more efficient but unfairer than staged evacuation. The efficiency-fairness trade-off was captured by Pareto-optimal strategies, among which uniform capacity cases led to a higher efficiency while prioritizing high-risk residents increases fairness. Strategies balancing efficiency and fairness featured a uniform capacity and prioritized high-risk residents at an intermediate time delay. These findings more clearly exposed the interactions between different factors and could be adopted as benchmarks to inform more complicated evacuation ABMs.

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Modelling the Brumadinho tailings dam failure, the subsequent loss of life and how it could have been reduced

Cited by 43 publications

References 28 publications

Prototype Scale Evaluation of Non-Newtonian Algorithms in HEC-RAS: Mud and Debris Flow Case Studies of Santa Barbara and Brumadinho

Prototype Scale Evaluation of Non-Newtonian Algorithms in HEC-RAS: Mud and Debris Flow Case Studies of Santa Barbara and Brumadinho

Tracking Deformation Processes at the Legnica Glogow Copper District (Poland) by Satellite InSAR—II: Żelazny Most Tailings Dam

Efficiency-fairness trade-offs in evacuation management of urban floods: The effects of the shelter capacity and zone prioritization

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