ABSTRACT
High safety standards for dams in Switzerland require continuous assessment of their structural stability and effectiveness of warning system. Therefore, risk assessment needs to be performed for estimation of consequences, e.g. Life Loss (LL), in case of a dam accident. With the life-loss estimation methods available nowadays, e.g. the LIFESim system, physical processes within the specific dam-failure event can be simulated. This study demonstrated the importance of adjusting the LL rates in LIFESim to reflect study-specific characteristics of the dam type and failure mode. In particular, for application to Swiss dams, alternative LL rate distributions were built based on historical events of concrete and masonry dams in the mountain regions of OECD countries. The alternative LL rates distributions had different shapes and frequency ranges than those recommended in LIFESim. A simulation example of a hypothetical dam failure showed that the alternative and recommended LL rates lead to different LL estimates.
