Multistate Overflow Fragility Models for Homogenous Inland Levees with Noncohesive Sediments
Publication: ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering
Volume 9, Issue 1
Abstract
Existing efforts for analyzing the overflow fragility of inland levees have focused primarily on breach and incorporated simplified definitions of breach for that purpose. The intermediate events that are precursors of a breach have not been analyzed, and several key performance measures including the duration of overflow, discharge rate, and time to the intermediate and breach events, which can inform decisions on evacuation and recovery planning, have not been investigated. This study, for the first time, provides a set of two-dimensional fragility models with an initial water level before surge and peak surge elevation as intensity measures. Fragility models are developed for the class of homogenous levees with noncohesive sediments. Breach formation is modeled through the Dam/Levee Breach model, and failure probabilities are derived using Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS). Unlike existing fragility models, the new class of fragility models accurately represents key performance failure events in levees including initiation of a breach, local geotechnical instabilities, and breach development. These models can be used in risk analysis frameworks to probabilistically account for local geotechnical failures and breach scenarios. Furthermore, probabilistic models for the time of peak discharge rate, breach peak outflow, and volume of water outflow are developed based on stochastic simulations of the flood performance of levees. A power model is investigated for representing breach peak outflow and is compared with previous deterministic models. The proposed model for breach peak outflow can be integrated with hydraulic inundation modeling to probabilistically estimate the inundated area downstream of levees.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This research has been funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) through Awards CMMI-1563372. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering
Volume 9 • Issue 1 • March 2023
Copyright
© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Apr 11, 2022
Accepted: Oct 19, 2022
Published online: Jan 2, 2023
Published in print: Mar 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Jun 2, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Analysis (by type)
- Disaster risk management
- Engineering fundamentals
- Failure analysis
- Flow (fluid dynamics)
- Fluid dynamics
- Fluid mechanics
- Geotechnical models
- Hydraulic engineering
- Hydraulic structures
- Hydrologic engineering
- Levees and dikes
- Mathematics
- Models (by type)
- Outflow
- Overflow
- Probability
- Risk management
- Simulation models
- Water and water resources
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