Risk Analysis Is Fundamentally Changing the Landscape of Dam Safety in the United States

The application of risk analysis has fundamentally changed the practice of dam safety engineering in the United States and will continue to do so. Dam safety risk analysis in the United States has its roots in the Bureau of Reclamation's application of failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) in the 1980s, an approach that evolved into what we know today as potential failure modes analysis (PFMA). Beginning in the 1990s, Reclamation further evolved its methodology from PFMA to quantitative risk analysis as a key tool in dam safety decision making. Around 2000, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) began requiring that all dams within its regulatory jurisdiction be subjected to PFMAs as part of its 5-year independent consultant inspection program. In the early 2000s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) began using a risk-informed decision making process in its dam safety program in a manner similar to what Reclamation had been doing, and in 2016 the FERC introduced a risk-informed decision making (RIDM) program for its licensees. Over the past decade, a number of state dam safety agencies and dam owner organizations have begun to introduce risk methodologies into their dam safety programs. The increasing application of risk analysis and risk consideration has resulted in the dam safety community 1) openly recognizing in a formal manner the many ways a dam can fail and the consequences of those failures, 2) using risk as a tool for prioritizing risk reduction actions, and 3) focusing monitoring programs and remediation efforts on the highest risk dams and potential failure modes.