Cost Optimal River Dike Design Using Probabilistic Methods (PAP015037)

Código

PAP015037

Autores

Konstantinos Bischiniotis, Wim Kanning, Sebastaiaan N. Jonkman

Tema

Floods in a changing climate

Resumo

This research focuses on the optimization of river dikes using probabilistic methods. Its aimis to develop a generic method that automatically estimates the failure probabilities of many river dikecross-sections and gives the one with the least cost, taking into account the boundary conditions and therequirements that are set by the user. Even though there are many ways that may provoke the dikefailure, the literature study showed that the failure mechanisms that contribute most to the failure of thetypical Dutch river dikes are overflowing, piping and inner slope stability. Based on these, the mostimportant design variables of the dike cross-section dimensions are set and following probabilistic designmethods, the probability of failure of many different dike cross-sections is estimated taking into accountthe abovementioned failure mechanisms. Different cross-section configurations may all comply with a settarget probability of failure. Of these, the cross-section that results in the lowest cost is considered theoptimal. This approach is applied to several representative dikes, each of which gives a different optimaldesign, depending on the local boundary conditions. The method shows that the use of probabilisticoptimization gives more cost-efficient designs than the traditional partial safety factor designs.