American Journal of Civil Engineering

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Incorporation of “Risk Factor” in Design Flood Review of Existing Dams

Received: Jul. 31, 2017    Accepted: Aug. 21, 2017    Published: Sep. 08, 2017
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Abstract

At present there are about 4877 completed large dams in India. More than 75% of Indian dams are at least two decades old and for these dams the original design floods call for revisions. Examination of revised design flood studies carried out for a set of 118 dams under ‘Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project (DRIP)’ reveal that the design flood values have increased substantially with trends indicating that percentage increases in the revised design flood values are greater for lower dams and also for older dams. Paper illustrates that the upward revision in the design flood estimate of existing dam in no way leads to amplification of the actual risk associated with that dam, and it only underlines the gap between the acceptable risk level and existing risk level. The paper shows that flood related risk mitigation of existing dams is a challenging task often facing constraints of technical and economical viabilities. With the substantial data set of design flood revisions of DRIP dams, the paper brings out the skew observed in distribution of revised design floods on account of present-day norms related to computation of design floods, as contained in the Indian Standard IS: 11223 – 1985 (reaffirmed 1995). Paper also proposes amendments in this Standard in respect of existing large dams with an alternative recourse of formulating a new Standard for revision of design floods incorporating the risk factor associated with these large dam structures.

DOI 10.11648/j.ajce.20170505.14
Published in American Journal of Civil Engineering ( Volume 5, Issue 5, September 2017 )
Page(s) 293-306
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Large Dams, Design Flood Review, Dam Failure, Flood Risk Mitigation, Dam Rehabilitation & Improvement Project

References
[1] Benstsson, S. (2001). Case Study: Risk Analysis of Spillway Gate function. Licentiate thesis at the Division of Hydraulics Engineering. Dam Safety and Risk Management. KTH. Stockholm.
[2] BIS (Bureau of Indian Standard) (1985). Guidelines for Fixing Spillway Capacity, IS-11223 (1985). New Delhi.
[3] CWC (Central Water Commission) (2010). Project Implementation Plan of Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project. New Delhi.
[4] CWC (Central Water Commission) (2016). National Register of Large Dams (2016). http://www.cwc.nic.in/main/downloads/New%20NRLD.pdf (Accessed August 16, 2017).
[5] CWC (Central Water Commission) (2017). Dam Rehabilitation & Improvement Project Web Page. https://damsafety.in/?page=About%20DRIP&origin=front-end&page_id=63&lang=en(Accessed August 16, 2017).
[6] FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) (2004). Federal Guidelines for Dam Safety: Selecting and Accommodating Inflow Design Floods for Dams. Maryland, USA.
[7] Gregg A. Scott (2011). The Practical Application of Risk Assessment to Dam Safety, ASCE.
[8] ICOLD (International Committee on Large Dams) (1982). A Glossary of Words and Phrases related to Dams, Bulletin 31a. Paris.
[9] ICOLD (International Committee on Large Dams) (1995). Dam failure Statistical Analysis, Bulletin 99. Paris.
[10] ICOLD (International Committee on Large Dams) (2017). Number of Dams by Country Members. http://www.icold-cigb.net/article/GB/world_register/general_synthesis/number-of-dams-by-country-members (Accessed August 16, 2017).
[11] USBR (United States Bureau of Reclamation) (2011). Dam Safety Public Protection Guidelines. Denver, USA.
[12] World Bank (2010). Project Appraisal Document on Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project, Report No. 51061-IN. Washington.
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  • APA Style

    Ravi Kumar Pillai, Om Prakash Gupta. (2017). Incorporation of “Risk Factor” in Design Flood Review of Existing Dams. American Journal of Civil Engineering, 5(5), 293-306. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajce.20170505.14

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    ACS Style

    Ravi Kumar Pillai; Om Prakash Gupta. Incorporation of “Risk Factor” in Design Flood Review of Existing Dams. Am. J. Civ. Eng. 2017, 5(5), 293-306. doi: 10.11648/j.ajce.20170505.14

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    AMA Style

    Ravi Kumar Pillai, Om Prakash Gupta. Incorporation of “Risk Factor” in Design Flood Review of Existing Dams. Am J Civ Eng. 2017;5(5):293-306. doi: 10.11648/j.ajce.20170505.14

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ajce.20170505.14,
      author = {Ravi Kumar Pillai and Om Prakash Gupta},
      title = {Incorporation of “Risk Factor” in Design Flood Review of Existing Dams},
      journal = {American Journal of Civil Engineering},
      volume = {5},
      number = {5},
      pages = {293-306},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ajce.20170505.14},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajce.20170505.14},
      eprint = {https://download.sciencepg.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajce.20170505.14},
      abstract = {At present there are about 4877 completed large dams in India. More than 75% of Indian dams are at least two decades old and for these dams the original design floods call for revisions. Examination of revised design flood studies carried out for a set of 118 dams under ‘Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project (DRIP)’ reveal that the design flood values have increased substantially with trends indicating that percentage increases in the revised design flood values are greater for lower dams and also for older dams. Paper illustrates that the upward revision in the design flood estimate of existing dam in no way leads to amplification of the actual risk associated with that dam, and it only underlines the gap between the acceptable risk level and existing risk level. The paper shows that flood related risk mitigation of existing dams is a challenging task often facing constraints of technical and economical viabilities. With the substantial data set of design flood revisions of DRIP dams, the paper brings out the skew observed in distribution of revised design floods on account of present-day norms related to computation of design floods, as contained in the Indian Standard IS: 11223 – 1985 (reaffirmed 1995). Paper also proposes amendments in this Standard in respect of existing large dams with an alternative recourse of formulating a new Standard for revision of design floods incorporating the risk factor associated with these large dam structures.},
     year = {2017}
    }
    

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    JO  - American Journal of Civil Engineering
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    AB  - At present there are about 4877 completed large dams in India. More than 75% of Indian dams are at least two decades old and for these dams the original design floods call for revisions. Examination of revised design flood studies carried out for a set of 118 dams under ‘Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project (DRIP)’ reveal that the design flood values have increased substantially with trends indicating that percentage increases in the revised design flood values are greater for lower dams and also for older dams. Paper illustrates that the upward revision in the design flood estimate of existing dam in no way leads to amplification of the actual risk associated with that dam, and it only underlines the gap between the acceptable risk level and existing risk level. The paper shows that flood related risk mitigation of existing dams is a challenging task often facing constraints of technical and economical viabilities. With the substantial data set of design flood revisions of DRIP dams, the paper brings out the skew observed in distribution of revised design floods on account of present-day norms related to computation of design floods, as contained in the Indian Standard IS: 11223 – 1985 (reaffirmed 1995). Paper also proposes amendments in this Standard in respect of existing large dams with an alternative recourse of formulating a new Standard for revision of design floods incorporating the risk factor associated with these large dam structures.
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Author Information
  • Ministry of Water Resources, River Development& Ganga Rejuvenation, New Delhi, India

  • Central Water Commission, New Delhi, India

  • Section