Improving the accuracy of breach modelling: why are we not progressing faster?

Flood risk assessment and management often requires prediction of the potential for a levee or dam to fail in order to provide information to aid in emergency planning, evacuation, or repair strategies. Prediction of levee or dam failure is an area where research has been undertaken for many decades in an attempt to provide more reliable models and predictions. However, despite these efforts progress has been slow and sometimes appears redundant. This prompts the obvious question as to why our ability to predict breach initiation and growth has not progressed further over this period. Why are so many studies identifying similar issues and, in effect, 'reinventing the wheel'? With a program of continued research into breach initiation and growth in both Europe, the US, and other parts of the World due to continued pressure to improve tools and techniques following events such as those seen at New Orleans in August 2005, this paper considers this question of apparent slow progress and offers some suggestions as to why this may have occurred and what direction might prove more effective.