Comparison of Earthen Levee Reliability in the Face of Flooding Hazards
Publication: Geotechnical Frontiers 2025
ABSTRACT
Earthen levees are critical infrastructure throughout the United States built along the waterways for flood control and mitigation. Evaluating the safety and reliability of earthen levees has become imperative because many of these structures are reaching the end of their designed life span, and risk-informed design and mitigation are needed, especially considering the potential future flooding hazards they may endure. The earthen levees can be constructed with different configurations, and the rockfill zone and toe drain are commonly used in earthen levee construction. However, the rockfill zone and toe drain are empirically designed, and the effect of the rockfill zone and toe drain on the reliability of earthen levee stability is not sufficiently studied. This paper presents a probabilistic finite difference modeling to evaluate the effect of the rockfill zone and toe drain on the stability of earthen levees. The probabilistic framework will explicitly account for the nature of uncertainties in geotechnical parameters for the reliability of levees in the face of incremental flooding hazards. The proposed framework can provide valuable guidance for risk-informed design for earthen levee stability in the face of flooding hazards.
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Geotechnical Frontiers 2025
Pages: 377 - 383
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Published online: Feb 27, 2025
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