ANALYSIS OF

APPROACH

EARTH

DAM

FAILURES

DATABASE

L.M. ZHANG, Y. XU
J.S JIA
OCTOBER 18-19, 2007

Analysis of dam failures is important for disaster prevention and mitigation,

for this reason understanding characteristics of dam failures is a needed. This case
study has been devoted to investigating dam failures. In this study, more than 900
dam failures cases throughout the world excluding China are compiled into a
database. Totally 593 failure cases on earth dams in the database are utilized to
study earth dam failures with statistical analysis. There are also potential locations
at risk are also described to provide the reader a better understanding of earth dam
failures.

The reservoir capacities of failed earth dams show that the height of these
dams are more than half or less than 15 m high. In the past, small reservoir
capacity or a small height appears to have relatively high possibility to fail. Ages of
the earth dams at failure indicates that dams most likely to fail within its first fiveyear service, especially during the first year after construction.

The causes of dam failures are categorized. These include overtopping and
piping as the most common cause, quality problems, poor management, disasters
and others. Overtopping is also identified as an important failure cause and piping
failure occur in the dam foundation or body. The paper discussed optimal decisions
in practice, a more robust understanding of the influence factors on the safety of
the whole system of dams is required.

It is significant to study earth dams or any other types of dam. Different

factors must be considered. Floods resulting from dam can lead to devastating
disasters with tremendous loss of life and property, especially in densely populated
areas.