(Sponsor: Research Project Competition (RPC) 2007, PI: Dr L.M. Zhang; Co-Is: Prof. Wilson H Tang and Prof. Y.K. Tung; Research assistants: Mr. Y. Xu and Miss Y. Liu)

Catastrophic flood disasters occurred occasionally due to dam breaches or river levee failures (e.g. 1600 deaths and US$100-200 billion economic losses due to the failure of the New Orleans levees in 2005 and 26000 deaths due to the breach of a chain of 62 dams in Henan Province in 1975). What happened? What went wrong? What were the consequences? What to do to improve the practice on design, maintenance, and operation?

 Dams in China held two No.1s in world’s records in terms of their total number (more than 86000) and being unsafe. Although Hong Kong has not experienced any dam failure incidence, there are, however, 14 old reservoir impoundments behind high dams aging from 40 to 130 years and most of them are situated upstream of densely populated regions. Risk analysis and risk communication are at the heart of natural disasters prevention and optimum engineering decision. Although many risk-analysis methods have been in use, risk analysis for large-scale engineering systems such as the New Orleans levees and the system of large dams along the Yangtze River and its numerous tributaries, is unprecedented. In-depth system risk evaluation, more effective risk communications and a better design approach based on life-cycle costs are required to be prepared for any catastrophic scenarios. The main objectives of this research project are to develop an explicit risk-based decision method for safety of large dams or levees and to illustrate this methodology with cases in our community (i.e., the decision problem associated with the North Pearl River Dikes that protect Guangzhou city, and the case of the breach of a system of dams in Henan Province in 1975). In addition to producing theoretic developments in system risk analysis, the HKUST project team members will be able to interact with researchers of several major on-going research projects around the world (see Potential Impact), and apply our know-how to help the society facing various natural disasters.