Predicting peak discharge from breached embankment dams

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Rasoul Azimi, Alireza Vatankhah, Salah Kouchakzadeh

Wednesday 1 july 2015

12:33 - 12:36h at South America (level 0)

Themes: (T) Flood risk management and adaptation, (ST) Flood risk assessment, Poster pitches

Parallel session: Poster pitches: 9J. FloodRisk - Assessment

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Analysis of dam breach is essential to assess the resulting flood risk for preparing the required action plan.. This research has utilized datasets from numerous dam failures to analyze peak discharges from breached embankments. Using gathered data, a new relationship for predicting peak-breach discharge is developed. 75 % of the data were used to derive the relationship and the validation was performed on the remaining 25% of the dataa. The proposed equation with two regression parameters is dimensionally consistent. To determine regression parameters, the root-mean squared error (RMSE) of the peak-breach discharge is minimized as an objective function using the Solver toolbox of Microsoft Excel. Comparison of the developed model results with that of other researchers highlighted the superiority of the proposed one. Accordingly, the simple yet accurate model developed in this research is proposed for predicting the peak outflow discharge due to an earth dam breach. Key words: Earth dam breach; Flood; peak discharge; Dam failures.