On-Demand Webinar: Rainfall and Dam Safety-From PMP to the 100-Year Storm
Association of State Dam Safety Officials, 2015
Understanding how extreme storms and their precipitation are analyzed is critically important for dam design and dam safety. This webinar will detail the background of PMP and storm analysis starting with the earliest work completed by the US Weather Bureau (now National Weather Service) and continuing through current statewide and site-specific PMP work. Data and methods used to quantify rainfall spatially, temporally, and in magnitude will be discussed. Information on how these data are applied to create return frequencies of rainfall data and the limitations of such values will be discussed. Details on recent advances, such as the use of NEXRAD weather radar and GIS, will be discussed in relation to storm analysis and PMP development, and comparison will be provided against legacy documents such as Technical Paper 40, NOAA Atlas 2, and NOAA Atlas 14.
Specific storm examples, which are important for dam safety design, will be discussed in detail. This will include information about the reliability of the original rainfall analyses and how that affects dam design and safety. Information related to the storms and their relationship to both return frequencies and climate change will be provided.
The intent of this webinar is to provide non-meteorologists, hydrologists, engineers, and others involved in dam safety and design an understanding on the background of storm analysis, how they are used in PMP development, and how those data are used for precipitation frequency analysis. The attendee should come away with an understanding of the uncertainty and sensitivity involved in the PMP process, which will allow the users to apply the data and make more informed decisions both in the design of structures reliant on rainfall information and regulators to make more informed decisions regarding dam safety.
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Speaker(s): Bill D. Kappel
Revision ID: 2260
Revision Date: 08/19/2022