Modeling Landslide Dambreak Flood Magnitudes: Case Study
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 133, Issue 7
Abstract
Landslide dams typically comprise unconsolidated and poorly sorted material and are vulnerable to rapid failure and breaching, resulting in significant and sudden flood risk downstream. Hence they constitute a serious natural hazard, and rapid assessment of the likely peak flow rate is required to enable preparation of adequate mitigation strategies. To determine the relative utility and accuracy of dambreak flood forecasts, field estimates of peak outflow rates from the failure of the Poerua landslide dam in October 1999 were compared with estimates from physical laboratory modeling, empirical methods, and computer modeling. There was reasonable agreement among the field estimates, laboratory modeling, and computer modeling. Some empirical estimates were less reliable. Reasonably reliable estimates of peak outflow can be obtained from computer model routines sufficiently rapidly to be of use in an emergency management situation. The laboratory modeling demonstrated the effect of dam batter slopes and valley bed slope on peak outflow; this information could be used to refine empirical or numerical estimates of peak outflow.
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Acknowledgments
The writers gratefully acknowledge input and information from Graham Hancox, Mauri McSaveney, Katy Hodgson, Ben Davies, Andrew King, and Warwick Hill. The laboratory work was carried out as part of a Lincoln University subcontract to the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences Ltd under PGSF Contract No. UNSPECIFIEDC05X0006.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 133 • Issue 7 • July 2007
Pages: 713 - 720
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Jul 21, 2004
Accepted: Mar 3, 2006
Published online: Jul 1, 2007
Published in print: Jul 2007
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