THE WORLD LARGEST DATA BASE ON DAM FAILURES - DATA ACQUISITION, MANAGEMENT, PROTECTION AND INTERNET-BASED APPLICATIONS

摘要

Risk estimations associated with dam failures based on statistical studies were difficult to carry out, because either the information of different data base were contradictory or no data were available. Dams are complex systems, their behaviour in the moment of a failure is dependent on the dam type, to their dimensions, to the volume of stored water, to the geology of their foundations and to the construction material of their dam bodies. The comparison of different failure rates also faces difficulties, because some failures listings define "failure" as an accident that destroys a dam and renders it useless, while other means a catastrophic accident, which releases most or all of the impounded water. The Data Station for Dam Failures DSDF-VIENNA collects since more than 20 years data of dam failures and presents now an event based harmonized accident data collection, which allows the evaluation of an operational experience of 150 years of dam engineering, including the basic research information which are necessary for risk assessments and probabilistic studies of structural reliability. The data base documents more than 900 dam failures and 133 of those of tailing dams.