Reliability-based design of flood defenses and flood defense systems

The combination of a quantitative reliability analysis with minimization of the construction cost is presented as a tool for the design of flood defenses. It is shown that the method can be used on the level of individual structures and on the level of systems of flood defenses. On the level of structures, the method provides the geometry of the structure as a function of the required safety level, the environmental conditions, and the cost of construction materials. On the level of systems, the method provides the optimal allocation of failure probabilities to individual structures to reach a required maximum flooding probability of the protected area.