(photo courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
With about 740 dams and associated structures to operate and maintain, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has developed a systemwide approach for assessing risk in flood risk management watersheds.
Dams are integral to many communities and critical to watershed management. To effectively operate and maintain those dams, USACE applies risk-informed decision making to evaluate, prioritize and justify dam safety decisions. Using risk information allows the organization to repair its dams in the most effective manner within a constrained budget.
“A lot of these structures were built 70 to 80 years ago — and in some cases 90 to 100 years ago — and the design lives for most of them was 50 to 75 years,” said Willie Brown, a research civil engineer at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center. “Some of these structures have outlasted what they were supposed to be able to provide — and that’s a great thing — but as that continues to be the case, the risk of failing…
