Integrated Information Repository for Risk Assessment of Embankment Dams: Requirements Identification for Evaluating the Risk of Internal Erosion

Dams are continuing to age and deteriorate that affect the service life of the dams in the U.S. Risk assessment is required to understand the behavior of dams and to prioritize the remedial actions and maintenance, and yet it is quite challenging to do risk assessment since it requires extensive current and historical data from in situ instrumentation on dams and detailed design, construction, and operation information. Currently, the required data for risk assessment resides in various paper-based and digital documents that hinder the capabilities of risk assessors to gather, analyze, and visualize the data flexibly from various engineering perspectives such as geotechnical, hydrologic, geologic, and structural. As a result, getting a holistic view of a dam’s current condition and its behavior over time becomes a time and resource intensive task. There is a need for an integrated shared knowledge repository for dams to streamline the risk assessment process. The research described in this paper provides requirements for developing such a shared knowledge repository for risk assessment of embankment dams that would support the information needs of various engineering domains and the means and methods for integrated assessment, visualization, and data analytics to understand the risk of internal erosion.