LEVEE SAFETY AND TOLERABLE RISK - IMPLICATIONS FOR SHARED RISK, RESPONSIBILITY, AND ACCOUNTABILITY

摘要

The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) established a levee safety program inNovember 2007 to assess and manage risks to people, property, and the environmentfrom inundation associated with breach or overtopping of levee systems. USACE intendsto use tolerability of risk concepts and tolerable risk guidelines in this program. USACEcommitted to develop these policies in an open and coordinated manner with its federal,state, local, and tribal stakeholders. In March 2010 USACE began this collaborativeapproach with stakeholders by hosting an international workshop on tolerable risk.Levee systems are one part of local, regional and national flood risk managementstrategies. Levees complement floodplain management activities that govern floodplainuse, identify, and reduce vulnerabilities to promote resilient communities. Sharedresponsibilities for floodplain management at the Federal, state and local levels requirecollaborative and coordinated decision-making to ensure that flood risks are tolerable.Levee systems help manage flood risk to existing development and at the same timemake floodplains available for more extensive uses such as residential, commercial andindustrial development. These activities produce benefits, but increased developmentplaces an increased number of people and assets in the floodplain. Consequently, thelevee system may lead to an increase in economic risk over time, and may transformeconomic risk into life-safety risk as the floodplain population increases. Developmentactivities and other floodplain decisions may begin to undermine the risk reductionobjectives of the levee system.This paper provides an overview of the USACE levee safety program, a summary ofcurrent USACE levee safety policy concepts and presents and discusses findings of theMarch 2010 workshop addressing tolerable risk guidelines for levees.