Levee Fragility Behavior under Projected Future Flooding in a Warming Climate
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 146, Issue 12
Abstract
Adaptation to climate change requires careful evaluation of infrastructure performance under future climatic extremes. This study demonstrates how a multidisciplinary approach integrating geotechnical engineering, hydrology, and climate science can be employed to quantify site-specific impacts of climate change on geotechnical infrastructure. Specifically, this paper quantifies the effects of changes in future streamflow on the performance of an earthen levee in Sacramento, California, considering multiple modes of failure. The streamflows for historical (1950–2000) and projected (2049–2099) scenarios with different recurrence intervals were derived from routed hydrological simulations driven by bias-corrected global climate models. The historical and future flood levels were then applied in a set of transient coupled finite-element seepage and limit equilibrium slope stability analyses to simulate the levee subjected to extreme streamflow. Variability in hydraulic and mechanical properties of soils was addressed using a Monte Carlo sampling method to evaluate and compare the probability of failure of the levee under different historical and future climate scenarios. Three individual modes (underseepage, uplift, and slope stability) along with lower and upper bounds for the combined mode of failure were examined. The results showed that incorporating future floods into levee failure analysis led to considerable reductions in the mean factor of safety and increases in the levee’s probability of failure, suggesting that risk assessment based on historical records can significantly underestimate the levee’s failure probability in a warming climate. Despite inherent uncertainties in future projections and substantial variability across climate models, evaluating infrastructure against projected extremes offers insights into their likely performance for the future.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request. These data and models include the model for finite-element simulations and the code used for ProNEVA.
Acknowledgments
This material is based upon work supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. CMMI-1634748 and CMMI-1635797. This work was also supported in part by a grant of computer time from the Department of Defense (DoD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), with computer time granted on the ERDC DoD Supercomputing Center (DSRC) Cray XC40 system named “Onyx.” We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modeling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate-modeling groups for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP, the DOE’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) provides coordinating support and leads the development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. We also thank Daniel Cayan, David Pierce, and Julie Kalansky from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, for providing downscaled and routed streamflow and gridded runoff projections over California. The bias-corrected model simulations for the state of California are available from the Cal-Adapt (https://cal-adapt.org/). The authors would like to thank Dr. Ghada Ellithy for her assistance during the revision of this paper. Constructive review comments and suggestions from an anonymous associate editor and three reviewers are greatly appreciated.
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Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 146 • Issue 12 • December 2020
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© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Jul 24, 2019
Accepted: Jul 8, 2020
Published online: Sep 30, 2020
Published in print: Dec 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Feb 28, 2021
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