Evaluating and Prioritizing Risk for a Portfolio of Dam Assets

Risk-based methods can be applied by owners of dam asset portfolios to, individually and collectively, identify risks and evaluate them in a portfolio context. Owners can efficiently allocate funds to mitigate the overall risk posed by their dam portfolio. However, this primary objective is more difficult when implementation budgets are finite. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) identified six of their 18 regulated dam assets perceived as having the highest level of risk for engineering evaluation and risk analysis to prioritize related risks and develop risk reduction measures. Detailed record keeping for each dam allowed for visual inspections and engineering evaluations to be completed without significant additional data gathering, which supported a screening-level risk analysis (SLRA) for each dam. SLRA results were aggregated to develop a portfolio risk management plan covering all six dams to guide the DNR in implementation of risk reduction measures. The project demonstrates how an implementation budget may be efficiently managed to evaluate dam risk both individually and within a portfolio of dam assets.