Understanding Risks Associated with Dams and in Context to Dams in Damodar Valley

Dam Safety Act, 2021 mandates dam owners of large dams to carry-out risk assessment studies within the next five years. Such studies aim to promote risk-informed dam safety management, allowing for an improved, transparent and rationalised decision-making process for potential investments in dam rehabilitation measures or taking up new studies or instrumentation in a dam. Risk assessment studies involve integrating multiple aspects of a dam, including design, construction, and operation; present condition, monitoring, and surveillance; performance against hydrologic, hydraulic and seismic variability, etc. The information helps in assessing the risk, qualitatively and quantitatively. The report attempts to identify various factors, inherent and external, to understand risk and uncertainty in a dam which starts by identifying potential failure modes, methods of estimation of the likelihood of such failure and associated consequences. Further, the report discusses a broad framework for risk assessment for dams in Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC). It also identifies a list of required data and studies for risk assessment of DVC dams.