Efficient risk assessment of landslide dam breach floods in the Yarlung Tsangpo river basin

Abstract

The sudden and unpredictable breach of landslide dams in the Yarlung Tsangpo river basin usually causes megafloods, posing great risks to human lives and infrastructures in the downstream areas. This study proposed an efficient and quantitative risk assessment framework of breach floods caused by landslide dam failures in the mainstream and tributaries of the Yarlung Tsangpo river basin with limited data. The impact of dam breach floods on human risks was evaluated. The flood attenuation along rivers, strategies for mitigating overlapping floods, and sensitivity analysis of human risks were also discussed. The results show that the developed framework successfully assessed flood risks caused by the breach of landslide dams. The flood attenuation ratio increased with river length but decreased with the peak discharge at dam site. A higher peak discharge and a larger inundated area downstream were predicted when the breach floods of two landslide dams, one in mainstream and the other in a tributary, overlapped at the confluence. The overlapping flood could be mitigated by reducing peak discharges of the two landslide dams or increasing time interval between the two peaks. The simulations also outlined the downstream peak discharge resulting from the cascading breach was larger than that of a single dam. However, it was smaller than the combined peak discharges of two separate dams, because the erosion during the breach of the downstream dam incurred energy dissipation. The human risks in the Pasighat village were greater when overlapping flood occurred due to the increased water depth and more hazardous inundated buildings. In the case of multi-peak floods, the warnings for the former peak flood would also warn the peak flood thereafter when individuals were notified multiple peaks. Otherwise, individuals might be misled by the warning of the previous peak flood, resulting in catastrophic flood impacts. A parametric analysis indicated that early evacuation warnings were needed to avoid serious loss of life and flood damages, especially in cases of dam breaches occurring at nighttime or for areas in close proximity to the dam site.