Land O’ Lakes Inundation Mapping: Challenges of Modeling and Mapping an Above Ground Reservoir

Dam breach modeling and inundation mapping for upland reservoirs can present a variety of challenges. Oftentimes, these reservoirs are located alongside water treatment plants, which are commonly built close to the residential areas that they service. Modeling this landscape can create problems in accurately representing the breach wave as it goes through these densely populated areas. Moreover, since a breach may be equally likely to occur around all faces of the embankment, special consideration must be given to the breach location. A balance needs to be found between minimizing the number of breaches to generate user-friendly, intuitive maps for emergency responders and modeling enough breach locations to ensure all potentially inundated structures are accounted for. This paper will outline a case study in which these challenges were encountered and explain how they were resolved to create informative breach modeling and useful inundation mapping.