Climate Change Adaptations for Dams in the USA

Understanding climate change impacts on dam design is essential to effective planning and investment in sustainable water infrastructure. Given the current, aging conditions of existing dams and reservoirs in the United States, and their importance to the economy, it is essential to address needed adaptations quickly and in a cost effective manner. This paper presents some of the key investigations being conducted in the United States to assess the impact of climate change on the design of existing and future dams. This paper is developed primarily using summary and excerpts from key publications to provide an overview of climate change impacts on the design of water resouirce projects. Work on climate change in the United States has been ongoing for almost two decades, but has gain a particular sense of urgency (and publicity) in the last five years. Design of existing large dams in the USA is normally based on flood frequency estimations based on observational data treatment and parameter estimation for flood frequency distributions. Fundamentally, it has been assumed that many things such as that the annual maximum floods are independent samples from a general population. This idea that information from the past is a good indication of current potential or future potential is called a Stationarity assumption. The Stationarity assumption may be less valid when the climate is changing and the flood potential at a location may be changing along with the climate. If the assumption of Stationarity is no longer valid, a new approach of Non-Stationarity must be developed to meet planning and design requirements. This presentation will highlight leading work in this area that has been developed byseveral federal, universities and private companies within the United States.

Keywords:

Climate Change , large dams in the USA , Stationarity