Is Population at Risk a Good Measure of Risk for Dam and Levee Safety?

The topic of the Tuesday General Session at Dam Safety 2022 was Dam Safety 3.0 – Changing our Paradigm. During this session, a panel of dam safety experts discussed the need for and approaches to improving our focus on the “real” dam safety risks. This focus is important for prioritizing dam safety activities given limited resources. A major portion of this discussion was on the application of risk-informed decision making (RIDM) as a tool to improve our focus. RIDM should not be viewed as “another activity” for regulators and owners to perform, but as a framework that informs all activities and their priorities.