2013 – DAMRAE-U: A tool for including uncertainty in dam safety risk assessment

Anurag Srivastava, David S. Bowles and Sanjay S. Chauhan

Based on a generalized event tree algorithm, a deterministic model (DAMRAE) was developed for the US Army Corps of Engineers to support the dam safety risk assessment. With an objective to incorporate the uncertainty analysis functionality for the event tree based risk models, we extend the DAMRAE framework to develop a generic uncertainty analysis tool (DAMRAE-U) for dam safety risk assessment. DAMRAE-U provides a convenient way to efficiently characterize, propagate, and display the outcomes of uncertainty analysis. DAMRAE-U is structured to analyze knowledge uncertainty for the event tree variables and natural variability associated with flood and earthquake loadings. It also provides for separating the effects of uncertainty in the existing condition of the dam system on which the event tree model is dependent. In this paper, we present the details of the developed computational framework. Also, an example risk model to illustrate the inputs and outputs of the framework and the implementation of tolerable risk evaluation incorporating uncertainty in risk estimates is included.