Risk Estimation of River Diversion with Observed Flood:Methodology and Case Study

Due to potential result in loss of human lives and substantial destruction of construction facilities in failure, risk estimation of river diversion is a long-standing problem in water resources planning and management. Despite extensive efforts to effectively tackle this problem during recent decades, the traditional rather inefficient technique of stochastic simulation approaches are limited by modeling assumptions, authenticity of de-signed flood and effectiveness of results in hydropower projects. Accordingly, this article aims at developing a risk estimation method with observed flood model as a remedy to shortcomings of existing common methods. The statistic definition of diversion risk is proposed on the basis of failure mechanism to measure the comprehensive affection of uncertainties. Observed flood and uncertainty of flow discharge along with flood routing process are considered in the estimation process to provide a more reliable result of diversion risk. This approach is demonstrated and discussed for river diversion system of Baima Dam in China and the risk estimation results are recommended for the optimal design of diversion system through comparison with two methods. The presented observed-flood-based asses approach can effectively provide designers and engineers with additional tool to recheck and evaluate risk of the system.