Geosyntec’s dam and levee safety professionals assist owners and operators in the implementation of a Risk-Informed Decision Making (RIDM) approach to understanding risk, the uncertainties associated with said risk, and selection of appropriate risk-reduction alternatives. A RIDM approach, including risk assessment, risk management, and risk communication, complements the more traditional standards-based methods with the application of qualitative and quantitative approaches to assess and manage risk.

Our team of engineers, geologists, and consequence specialists helps our clients successfully leverage the RIDM approach to dam and levee safety. We identify site-specific hazards, potential failure modes, system response probabilities, and adverse consequences using qualitative and quantitative estimates of likelihood of failure and magnitude of consequences.

We support owners in RIDM by identifying risk-driving potential failure modes, developing interim risk-reduction measures, and performing alternatives analysis for major dam and levee safety modifications. Geosyntec prepares comprehensive summaries of the risk assessment to inform owners, stakeholders, and others and provide technical support with the dam and levee safety RIDM process.

To support dam owner and operators manage their risk components, our team performs compliance inspections (including FERC Part 12D), potential failure mode analysis (PFMA), dam safety surveillance monitoring plans and reports, geotechnical, geologic, and geophysical investigations, deterministic and probabilistic seismic hazard analysis, dam break analysis and inundation mapping, structural assessments, construction support and quality assurance, instrumentation, information management systems, and data visualization.

Geosyntec also partners with our clients to assess consequences associated with flood hazards and evaluate mitigation measures aimed at reducing life, property, and economic loss.