Abstract
Safety inspection of large dams in Taiwan is conducted every 5 years. The practice does not take into consideration uncertainty of dam conditions. The goal of this study is to determine the optimal dam inspection interval under the consideration of overtopping risk incorporating uncertainty gate availability. In earlier studies, assessment of overtopping risk only considered the uncertainties in reservoir properties and natural randomness of hydrologic events without giving much thought to the availability of spillway gates. As a result, the overtopping risk could be underestimated. In this study, an innovative concept is proposed to evaluate dam overtopping by taking into account spillway gate availability. The framework consists of three parts: (1) evaluation of conditional overtopping risk for different numbers of malfunctioning spillway gates; (2) evaluation of spillway gate availability; and (3) dam inspection scheduling. Furthermore, considerations are given to overtopping risk, inspection cost, and dam break cost for determining the optimal inspection schedule. The methodology is applied to the Shihmen Reservoir in Taiwan and to evaluate its time-dependent overtopping risk. Results show that overtopping risk considering the availability of the spillway gates is higher than the one without considering the availability of the spillway gates.
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Acknowledgments
This study was based on the work supported by the Water Resources Agency, Ministry of Economic Affair (MOEA). The assistances from the Shihmen Reservoir Administrative Bureau and other reservoir administrative bureaus are gratefully acknowledged. We also thank the editor and referees for very helpful suggestions.
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Kuo, JT., Hsu, YC., Tung, YK. et al. Dam overtopping risk assessment considering inspection program. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 22, 303–313 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-007-0116-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00477-007-0116-3