Abstract
Urbanization and climate change increase water pressure in dams and
stress the stability of flood-control structures. Many of the existing
dams are aging and have been classified as deficient or having potential
for life-threatening hazards in the event of failure. Common mitigation
measures include optimizing reservoir release rates and/or implementing
additional large—scale infrastructure. Such decisions are typically
investigated with drainage models that do not consider co-evolving
variables, such as environmental effects or socio-economic impacts.
Flood-control reservoirs form complex hydrologic systems that contain
numerous interdependencies and intricate feedbacks that must be balanced
to achieve optimal resiliency. A spatial multicriteria analysis (SMCA)
framework is presented that integrates a suite of social and
environmental vulnerabilities with reservoir modeling and
decision-making weights. An implementation of adaptive flood control
case study of the Addicks and Barker Reservoirs in Houston, Texas, USA
during Hurricane Harvey is used to illustrate the proposed technique and
to highlight the complexities involved in reservoir decision-making.
Hydrologic synergies that would be realized from maintaining status quo
operations, optimizing reservoir releases, or increasing storage
capacity through engineered solutions are explored. The SMCA methodology
is used to visualize how such relationships alter environmental and
social vulnerabilities for improved decision-making. In this way, the
decision-making process becomes an endogenous component of the
integrated human-water-environment feedbacks, thus enabling adaptive
management of flood-control reservoirs with comprehensive risk.