26 Mar 2024

Risk-Based Prioritization of Operational Condition Assessments: Trinity River and Willamette River Case Studies

Abstract: The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) operates, maintains, and man-ages over 700 dams and 4,000 miles of levees, providing approximately $257 billion worth of economic benefit to the Nation. USACE employs the Operational Condition Assessment (OCA) process to understand the condition of those assets and allocate resources to minimize risk associated with performance degradation. Understanding risk in flood risk management (FRM) assets requires an understanding of consequence of asset failure from a systemwide FRM watershed perspective and an understanding of likelihood of degradation based on the condition of the low-level components derived from OCA ratings. This research demonstrates a case-study application of a scalable methodology to model the likelihood of a dam performing as expected given the state of its gates and their components. The research team combines this likelihood of degradation with consequences generated by the application of designed simulation experiments with hydrological models to develop risk measures. These risk measures can be developed for all FRM gate assets in order to enable traceable, consistent resource allocation decisions. Two case study applications are provided.