Author(s): Monica Soares Resio Zuffo; Ana Ines B. Genovez
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: Dams; Dam Safety; Decision Support Systems; Inspection; Evaluation; Methodology for Dam Safety Evaluation. 1
Abstract: Dams are structures associated with high potential risks due to the possibility of failure, which could bring catastrophic consequences to themselves, to the environment and, mainly, economical and life losses. The purpose of this work is to validate an alternative methodology to evaluate the safety of dams. The methodology to be tested is called Dam Safety Index (DSI) and it considers eighteen different criteria, which are appraised separately to evaluate each dam, to get its classification in terms of security conditions, which can rank from Satisfactory to Unsatisfactory. Several dams located at the Cabras Creek, Campinas, Brazil, were chosen to validate the methodology. This river has 25% of all dams approved by the local government of Campinas city. The DSI methodology results are compared to those obtained by the application of the Behaviour Index Methodology (BI), of which the dam safety classification can rank from Normal to Emergency. The DSI results showed that 37. 5% of the dams were in unsatisfactory conditions and 62. 5% were in poor conditions. As a result of the BI methodology application, it was found that 62. 5% of the dams were in an emergency condition, 25. 0% were in an alert condition, 8. 3% were in an attention condition and 4. 2% - one dam - was in a normal condition. In short, according to the DSI result, a 100% of the studied dams need more detailed studies and are in need of urgent repairs not meeting the minimum safety level standards required and the BI found that 87. 5% of dams are in the same need. All in all, the DSI Methodology proved itself to be effective and an important tool to diagnose the safety of dams, however rigorous.
Year: 2007