Dam break analysis of an existing dam by integrated hydrologic modeling and gene-expression programming

Dams can be considered the most dangerous structures in civil engineering because of the devastation that occurs as impounded reservoir water escapes through the breach of a failed dam and rushes downstream, beside of losing billions of dollars in infrastructure and property damages. Application of GIS techniques from satellite data in integration with hydrological modeling for mapping of flood inundated areas can play a momentous role in minimizing the risk. For this purpose, the numerical dam break model for analyzing of Dukan Dam is performed under various scenarios. Dukan Dam is located on the Lesser Zab River near the city of Sulaymaniyah in Iraq. The objective of these analyses is to investigate adverse effects of dam break failure on the regions downstream of the dam. The numerical model used in the simulations is SMPDBK model of WMS software, which is developed by the National Weather Service (NWS) in the United States. The analysis results show that most adversely effected regions are those that are closest to the dam location. The results of these simulations can be efficiently used to prepare emergency action plans in case of possible failures. In addition, Gene Expression Programming (GEP) is used in this research as an evolutionary symbolic regression technique for obtaining formulas that predict flood characteristics that can be used in future without using any type of numerical dam break models and without using a lot of information, effort and time. Keyword: Dam break analysis, GIS, Gene-Expression Programming, Flood simulation, Watershed modeling system.