ABSTRACT
Caused by recent extreme floods throughout Europe the safety of hydraulic structures against failure during such events is under reconsideration in several countries. Due to their frequently high damage potential dams are of special interest. At present dam safety assessment is often based on the choice of suitable design flood events. For this design flood initial conditions for the reservoir level and the state of operating devices like outlets and weirs have to be assumed. The problem is that the probabilities of these system states are difficult to quantify. Thus, also the combination of several probabilities is uncertain. The consequence is that little is known about the risk related with dams if design floods are used. Instead, through longterm continuous modelling it is possible to determine probability risk functions. A possible approach is presented in this paper and demonstrated by means of a real world case study.
