Some Methods for Assessing the Safety of Dams Which May Have Applicability to Energy Facilities

Abstract

Two of the key tasks in providing for the maintenance and upgrade of aging industrial facilities are the establishment of criteria for use in evaluating the condition/safety of various elements of a facility, and the development of a prioritization scheme for accomplishing repairs and improvements. This paper briefly presents some methods seeing increased usage in the dam safety community for accomplishing these tasks. An overview is presented of the decision framework used by the Washington State dam safety program for selecting probabilistic design/performance goals for critical project elements. An overview is also given of schemes used by some Federal and State dam safety programs for setting priorities in allocating resources for repairs and improvements.