Role of dams as critical infrastructures to protect citizens from flooding and climate change

Abstract

As society continues to increase its demands for higher levels of safety, security and reliability for all critical infrastructures, the design, construction, and operation of dams should be integrated as part of a comprehensive risk management framework that can effectively address natural and manmade hazards. Integrated management strategies are becoming increasingly important in recent years and as such, their related implementation efforts should include aspects such as sustainability, resilience, and public participation. This paper presents a general framework to comprehensively address flooding risk identification, analysis, assessment and mitigation while informing managing decision making and improving policies and governance. It also allows to better understand the role of dams as critical infrastructures to protect citizens from flooding and climate change through a validation example of the overall methodology