Role of Probabilistic Methods in Sustainable Geotechnical Earthen Embankment Overtopping Analysis

摘要

A large number of embankment structures, including levees, dikes, and barriers, have been built by humans or formed naturally along rivers, lakes, and coastal lines around the world. Most of these structures play very important roles in flood defence, although many are also used for water supply, transportation, and sediment retention. Because these structures can sustain only limited safety levels and are subject to decay, they may fail owing to various triggering mechanisms particularly due to overtopping with a high probability of failure under extreme flood conditions. These failures pose significant flood risks to people and property in the inundation area and cause an interruption of services provided by these structures. This work provides an example of how traditional methods for analysing levees for overtopping can be approached probabilistically so that inherent uncertainty within the results is understood and areas for improvement can be identified. This paper proposes reliability based levee overtopping approaches and strategies that can be address these sources of uncertainties. Probabilistic methods have been applied successfully to two primary categories of uncertainties encountered in geotechnical engineering; natural variabilities and modelling uncertainties.