Internal Erosion Breach Model Review and Validation

Abstract

Predicting breach erosion processes is essential for the effective risk management of both dams and levees. Following the success of an earlier initiative to assess the performance of breach models for predicting overflow erosion of dams and levees a new project has been launched to investigate the performance of industry models predicting breach formation initiated through internal erosion. The overall conclusions from this work will be guidance for industry practitioners regarding the types, availability, and likely performance of industry applicable internal erosion breach prediction models. This paper presents details of progress achieved with the performance evaluation programme at the start of 2021, which is roughly halfway through the 2 ½ year overall programme.