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Are you ready to up your dam safety game with McBreach? National Dam Safety Awareness Day

While events like National Dam Safety Day occur once each year and help raise our awareness regarding the risks with dams, at Kleinschmidt, every day includes ongoing dam safety work for our clients. From dam inspections and the development of surveillance plans to rehabilitative designs, we work alongside dam owners across North America whose daily activity is also centered on dam safety. Their vigilance and preparedness is informed with key information and smart planning tools to address the risks of the unknown BEFORE an event happens.

We also “man the watch” alongside our clients who own dams, constantly thinking of better ways to up our game as we assist them in their preparatory actions that can include modeling of dam breach events and the formulation of Emergency Action Plans. One new tool our staff developed, McBreach, transforms a dam owner’s approach to modeling dam breach consequences. Instead of mapping a large zone with equal probability of occurrence (either “in” or “out” of the flooding zone), it allows owners to model a full range of breach scenarios – from partial to complete, correlating the downstream impacts with a likelihood or probability of an area actually flooding.

This risk-based approach arms decision makers with a probability based analysis map, allowing them to visualize and prioritize actions in areas that are more likely to flood first. This analysis in turn leads to smarter emergency action planning, allowing first responders and other agencies to stage critical resources such as traffic management crews in key places to allow for systematic evacuation. Layered into a real time Geographic Information System, this key information can enable better decision making in the event of an emergency which could improve public opinion and benefit public safety.

Are you ready to up your dam safety game? Visit us on the web to learn how we can use McBreach to help take your emergency planning system and processes to the next level BEFORE an event happens.

For additional information about McBreach, you can contact Chris Goodell, Principal Consultant, Hydraulics and Hydrology. Chris specializes in water resources hydraulic engineering. His expertise includes hydraulic modeling, dam break studies, sediment transport, bridge and culvert design, inundation mapping, and software development/design. He is an internationally known leader in HEC-RAS modeling with a particular interest in risk-based solutions for hydraulic modeling. He has taught over 100 professional education courses on HEC-RAS around the United States and on 5 continents.

Created By
GinaRenee Autrey
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