Technical Studies

Due to the presence of various uncertainties, in additional to hydrologic inherent randomness, the actual performance reliability associated with the hydraulic infrastructure is less than the anticipated reliability. Climatic change in the foreseeable future might have altered hydro-meteorological environments in Taiwan and introduces more complexity and uncertainty in hydrological and hydraulic characteristics in hydrosystem infrastructural designs.

According to results of the fault-tree analysis, the uncertainty factors affecting flood protection capability of hydraulic infrastructures are categorized into hydrologic (rainfall duration, amount, pattern, and tide level at river mouth), geomorphologic (channel roughness and land use characteristics represented by curve number), structural (earthquake, subsidence, and piping, etc.), and others (weir coefficients at diversion, operations such as pumping stations and gates). Based on the above risk factors, the flood risk assessment framework for hydraulic infrastructures consists is built to assess the failure probability of flood protection infrastructural systems for risk management.

This project is to be implemented in two phases with one year each. The first phase (year-1) focuses on the consideration of various hydrologic uncertainties in the development of reliability analysis and risk assessment framework. Furthermore, the Keelung River Basin is chosen as the case study for demonstrating and testing the development framework.