DamsDam simulation program saves lives, money
Have you ever wondered what happens when a dam fails? How fast and how far would all the water, which was being held back, reach? How long would it take to stop and just how deep would the flooding be? And, most importantly, how much damage would it cause to properties, infrastructures and the environment downstream from the dam? Not to mention the toll on human life. With more than 96,000 dams across the United States, those are the kind of questions dam safety engineers in state and government agencies and emergency managers must answer in order to prevent loss of life and to protect properties and critical infrastructures in case of a dam failure.
Have you ever wondered what happens when a dam fails? How fast and how far would all the water, which was being held back, reach? How long would it take to stop and just how deep would the flooding be? And, most importantly, how much damage would it cause to properties, infrastructures and the environment downstream from the dam? Not to mention the toll on human life.
With more than 96,000 dams across the United States, those are the kind of questions dam safety engineers in state and government agencies and emergency managers must answer in order to prevent loss of life and to protect properties and critical infrastructures in case of a dam failure. Almost 10 years ago, the Department of S&T says that Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) waded into the discussion; developing a modeling and simulation tool to help provide better answers to those questions. To date, that tool – the Simulation-Based Decision Support System for Water Infrastructural Safety or - DSS-WISETM has modeled more than 1,800 dams so far, saving the American taxpayer nearly $50,000,000.
DSS-WISE was developed to support the DHS Office of Infrastructure Protection, Dams Sector Section and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). S&T funded the free flood simulation software, which quickly calculates the spread of flood water in case of dam or levee breaches.
S&T has recently released a newer version called DSS-WISE Lite that allows for more complicated simulations. S&T funded the National Center for Computational Hydroscience and Engineering (NCCHE) at the University of Mississippi to develop the DSS-WISE which combined a state-of-the-art numerical model for two-dimensional flood simulation with decision support tools to map the flood and evaluate its consequences.
In 2011, NCCHE began to develop DSS-WISE™ Lite – a web-based version of this software with automated input data preparation. This web-based, automated dam-break flood modeling and mapping capability became available in 2012. In 2015, DHS Office of Infrastructure Protection, Dams Sector Section, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) decided to support NCCHE to create a standalone, improved version of DSS-WISE Lite.
