Development of F-N Curves for Public Safety Risks Associated with Dam Failures in the U.S.

摘要

With the advancing use of risk-informed decision-making in dam safety, there is interest in identifying tolerable public safety criteria or guidance for dam failures. Historic data has been used as a benchmark for establishing tolerable risk criteria that are in use today. A metric for measuring public safety risks is the F-N curve, which shows the frequency of exceedance per year (F) of fatalities (N). In this paper, we present the development of an updated F-N relationship for dam failure-related fatalities based on an up-to-date database, statistical analysis, and the evaluation of uncertainties. An issue of particular interest in terms of estimating the frequency of occurrence is being able to estimate the number of dam years of operation that exposes populations to the threat of dam breach floods. The result of the analysis is an estimate of the F-N curve that includes an estimate of the uncertainty (5-95% confidence intervals) in the results.