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DAM AND LEVEE SAFETY
AND COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
A VISION FOR FUTURE PRACTICE
Committee on Integrating Dam and Levee Safety and Community Resilience
Committee on Geological and Geotechnical Engineering
Board on Earth Sciences and Resources
Division on Earth and Life Studies
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T HE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS • 500 Fifth Street, NW • Washington, DC 20001
NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the
National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy
of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of
the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard
for appropriate balance.
This study was supported by Contract HSFEHQ-10-C-1400 between the National Academy of
Sciences and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or
recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect
the views of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-25614-8
International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-25614-3
Additional copies of this report are available for sale from the National Academies Press, 500 Fifth
Street, NW, Keck 360, Washington, DC 20001; (800) 624-6242 or (202) 334-3313; http://www.
nap.edu/.
Copyright 2012 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
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The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished
scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and
technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by
the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government
on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone is president of the National Academy of
Sciences.
The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National
Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its
administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences
the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also
sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research,
and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Charles M. Vest is president of the
National Academy of Engineering.
The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure
the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters
pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National
Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and,
upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Harvey V.
Fineberg is president of the Institute of Medicine.
The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to
associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy’s purposes of furthering
knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies
determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the
National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the
government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered
jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone and Dr. Charles M.
Vest are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the National Research Council.
www.national-academies.org
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COMMITTEE ON INTEGRATING DAM AND LEVEE SAFETY AND
COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
JOHN J. BOLAND (Chair), Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
TONY BENNETT, Ontario Power Generation, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada
RAYMOND J. BURBY, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
STEPHEN J. BURGES, University of Washington, Seattle
RITA E. CESTTI, The World Bank, Washington, DC
ROSS B. COROTIS, University of Colorado, Boulder
CLIVE Q. GOODWIN, FM Global Insurance Company, Johnston, Rhode Island
ROGER E. KASPERSON, Clark University, Washington, DC
SHIRLEY LASKA, University of New Orleans, Louisiana
LEWIS E. LINK, University of Maryland, College Park
MARTIN W. McCANN, Jr, Jack R. Benjamin & Associates, Inc., Menlo Park,
California
HILLMAN MITCHELL, King County Office of Emergency Management, Renton,
Washington
National Research Council Staff
SAMMANTHA L. MAGSINO, Study Director
JASON ORTEGO, Research Associate
CHANDA T. IJAMES, Senior Program Assistant
v
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COMMITTEE ON GEOLOGICAL AND GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING
EDWARD KAVAZANJIAN, Jr. (Chair), Arizona State University, Tempe
JOHN T. CHRISTIAN, Consulting Engineer, Burlington, Massachusetts
PATRICIA J. CULLIGAN, Columbia University, New York, New York
CONRAD W. FELICE, HNTB Corporation, Bellevue, Washington
DEBORAH J. GOODINGS, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia
MURRAY W. HITZMAN, Colorado School of Mines, Golden
JAMES R. RICE, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
National Research Council Staff
SAMMANTHA L. MAGSINO, Senior Program Officer
CHANDA T. IJAMES, Senior Program Assistant
vi
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BOARD ON EARTH SCIENCES AND RESOURCES
CORALE L. BRIERLEY (Chair), Brierley Consultancy, LLC, Denver, Colorado
WILLIAM E. DIETRICH, University of California, Berkeley
WILLIAM L. GRAF, University of South Carolina, Columbia
RUSSELL J. HEMLEY, Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC
MURRAY W. HITZMAN, Colorado School of Mines, Golden
EDWARD KAVAZANJIAN, Jr, Arizona State University, Tempe
DAVID R. MAIDMENT, University of Texas, Austin
ROBERT McMASTER, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
M. MEGHAN MILLER, UNAVCO, Inc., Boulder, Colorado
ISABEL P. MONTAÑEZ, University of California, Davis
CLAUDIA INÉS MORA, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico
BRIJ M. MOUDGIL, University of Florida, Gainesville
CLAYTON R. NICHOLS, Idaho Operations Office (Retired), Ocean Park, Washington
HENRY N. POLLACK, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
DAVID T. SANDWELL, University of California, San Diego
PETER M. SHEARER, University of California, San Diego
REGINAL SPILLER, Azimuth Investments, LLC, Houston, Texas
TERRY C. WALLACE, Jr., Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico
National Research Council Staff
ANTHONY R. de SOUZA, Director (until April 2012)
ELIZABETH A. EIDE, Director (from April 2012)
DAVID A. FEARY, Senior Program Officer
ANNE M. LINN, Senior Program Officer
SAMMANTHA L. MAGSINO, Senior Program Officer
MARK D. LANGE, Program Officer
JENNIFER T. ESTEP, Administrative and Financial Associate
NICHOLAS D. ROGERS, Financial and Research Associate
COURTNEY R. GIBBS, Program Associate
JASON R. ORTEGO, Research Associate
ERIC J. EDKIN, Senior Program Assistant
CHANDA T. IJAMES, Senior Program Assistant
vii
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Preface
Late in 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, U.S. newspapers were filled with
speculation as to whether New Orleans would continue to exist as a great and unique
American city. Levee and floodwall failure had inundated large parts of the city and re-
sulted in more than 1,500 deaths and catastrophic damage to property and the economy. In
2011, extreme amounts of precipitation, inadequate levees, and possible mismanagement of
reservoirs contributed to widespread flooding around Bangkok, Thailand. More than 500
deaths have been associated with that flood,1 and the closing of more than 1,000 industrial
facilities had severe repercussions for global supply chains in the electronics and automotive
industries.2 These two incidents occurred half a world and 6 years apart, but they shared
a set of facts: neither city was adequately prepared, had appropriate measures in place to
mitigate damage once flooding occurred, or seemed able to recover quickly; and neither city
proved particularly resilient in the face of what were somewhat foreseeable circumstances.
Resilience has long been a major topic in the natural-hazard literature and is defined
in this report as the ability of a system to absorb disturbance and quickly return to nor-
mal or a new normal while maintaining its identity and ability to function. In the case of
earthquakes, for example, there is convincing evidence that building community resilience
through preparedness, risk communication, response and recovery planning, and adaptation
substantially reduces short-term and long-term effects of earthquakes. It is reasonable to
assume that the same would be true for flooding events, but many questions arise: What
actions increase resilience? Who should take those actions? How can they be motivated to
do so? How can one monitor progress and success in building resilience? And, most relevant
to the present study, how can the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) use
its programs and networks to promote increased community resilience?
See www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15610536.
1
See www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/business/global/07iht-floods07.html.
2
ix
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PREFACE
In its search for answers, FEMA asked the National Research Council (NRC) to
convene a committee to determine how dam and levee safety programs can be broadened
to include activities that enhance community and regional preparation for, response to,
mitigation of, and recovery from infrastructure failure. A committee was formed in early
2011 and included a wide array of disciplines, such as engineering, economics, planning,
natural-hazard studies, hazard insurance, emergency management, and sociology.
Not surprisingly, committee members quickly discovered that, although they shared
long experience and deep interest in the subject, they were accustomed to working within
rather different paradigms and vocabularies. Consequently, members devoted much time
early in the study to learning to understand one another. The committee noted that its own
communication difficulties could be considered a microcosm of the broader communication
issues that every community of diverse stakeholders will confront as it attempts to build
resilience.
This report describes a tool for assessing stakeholder engagement that can also gauge
and document a community’s progress toward greater resilience. As the committee worked
to understand and develop this into a tool useful at the community level, the tool itself
promoted communication among the members and eventually helped the committee reach
its consensus conclusions. By extension, the tool should serve the same purpose in a com-
munity, facilitating communication as stakeholders strive to build resilience. Many tools
are available for increasing community resilience, but the Maturity Matrix for Assessing
Community and Stakeholder Engagement emerges as an instrument for organization,
communication, and assessment—a “tool of tools.”
Before embarking on the study, however, the committee had to understand the mean-
ing and intent of the statement of task, particularly as it describes the problem confronting
the sponsor. This consideration was helped greatly by early conversations with Dr. Sandra
Knight, FEMA deputy associate administrator for mitigation. Dr. Knight’s presentation
at the first meeting emphasized several ideas that would become central themes of the
study: the notion of the “whole community” as the locus of action, the importance of an
integrated approach to reducing risk, and FEMA’s need to find ways to motivate change
through its existing dam and levee safety programs. In addition to Dr. Knight’s assistance,
the committee is also grateful to FEMA’s James Demby for his advice and support at vari-
ous critical points in the study.
The committee met four times over an 8-month period: twice in Washington, D.C.,
and twice in Irvine, California. In the course of those meetings, the committee consulted
with a number of dam and levee engineering, management, and safety experts. They in-
cluded Sandra Knight of FEMA; James Gallagher, Jr. of the New Hampshire Department
of Environmental Services; Yazmin Seda-Sanabria of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Critical Infrastructure Protection and Resilience Program; Steve Verigin of GEI Consul-
tants (former chief of the California Department of Water Resources Division of Safety
x
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P reface
of Dams); Kurt Rinehart of the Miami, Ohio, Conservancy District; Dennis Mileti of the
University of Colorado; and Richard Pineda of the California Department of Water Re-
sources. The committee is grateful to all these individuals for their thoughtful presentations
and thought-provoking discussions.
Other persons attended open sessions of committee meetings and provided input. Nu-
merous outside experts were consulted by individual members over the course of the study
as the committee deliberated its task and prepared its report. Their input provided much
to consider and contributed greatly to the final product
The committee had numerous occasions to be grateful for the exceptional competence
and efficiency of the NRC staff members assigned to this project. Complicated logistical
arrangements were handled with ease and good humor by Chanda Ijames, senior project as-
sistant. Jason Ortego, research associate, was responsible for completing numerous research
assignments, usually required in a matter of days, and he always exceeded our expectations.
An avid reader of NRC report prefaces will have seen numerous references to the high
quality of its staff directors, often noting substantive contributions to fulfilling tasks in addi-
tion to managing the myriad activities that go into these studies and, finally, producing the
final reports. But our experience went beyond expectations. Our staff director, Sammantha
Magsino, senior program officer, served as technical resource, fact-checker, inspiration,
author, editor, and taskmaster. She was repeatedly able to turn vigorous discussion into con-
sensus, scattered notes into coherent text, and rambling discourse into disciplined thinking.
Samm made the committee’s challenging task rewarding and the chair’s work manageable.
From the first meeting of this committee, there was no doubt about members’ pas-
sion for the subject of community resilience, born of long experience with floods and their
aftermath. But the transformation of their passion into concrete suggestions for FEMA,
as it builds strategies for community resilience into dam and levee safety programs, proved
complex and challenging. We believe that we have made a good start, but there is more to
be done.
John J. Boland
Chair
xi
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Acknowledgment of
Reviewers
This report has been reviewed in draft form by persons chosen for their diverse per-
spectives and technical expertise in accordance with procedures approved by the National
Research Council’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of the independent review is to
provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published
report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards of
objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and
draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We
thank the following individuals for their participation in the review of this report:
Gerald E. Galloway, University of Maryland, College Park
John R. Harrald, Virginia Polytechnic and State University, Alexandria
Desmond Hartford, BC Hydro and Power Authority, Burnaby, British Columbia
Arleen A. Hill, The University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee
James Johnson, Independent Consultant, Columbia, Maryland
Peggy A. Johnson, Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Michael K. Lindell, Texas A&M University, College Station
Alessandro Palmieri, The World Bank, Washington, D.C.
Ricardo Pineda, California Department of Water Resources, Sacramento
Paula Scalingi, Bay Area Center for Regional Disaster Resilience, Pleasanton, California
Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and
suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations, nor did
they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was over-
seen by John Christian, Consulting Engineer, Burlington, Massachusetts. Appointed by
xiii
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF REVIEWERS
the National Research Council, he was responsible for making certain that an independent
examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and
that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of
this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.
xiv
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Contents
SUMMARY 1
1 INTRODUCTION 17
The Committee’s Task, 18
Historical Dam and Levee Performance, 20
Basic Concepts in This Report, 24
Committee Reflections on Its Task, 30
Report Organization, 34
2 COMMUNITY CHARACTERISTICS AND IMPROVING
COMMUNITY RESILIENCE 35
Characteristics of a Resilient Community, 36
Engaging All Elements of a Community for Resilience, 38
Implications for Enhancing Resilience, 42
Building Social Capital for Community Resilience, 47
3 CURRENT DAM AND LEVEE INFRASTRUCTURE,
MANAGEMENT, AND GOVERNANCE 49
Dam and Levee Infrastructure, 50
Dam and Levee Safety Programs, 59
Dam and Levee Safety Governance, 61
4 VISION AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR
RESILIENCE-FOCUSED ENGAGEMENT 77
Dam and Levee Professionals as Part of the Larger Community, 78
Conceptual Framework: Expanding the Meaning and Role of
Dam and Levee Safety, 85
xv
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CONTENTS
5 TOOLS FOR BUILDING RESILIENCE 97
Challenges to Building Community Resilience, 99
Choosing Tools to Enhance Community Resilience, 103
Assessing the State of Practice with Respect to Resilience, 111
6 CONCLUSIONS 121
Defining Community, 122
Enabling Information Access, 123
Managing Risk Collaboratively, 125
Making a Cultural Shift, 126
A Repository of Resilience Enhancing Tools, 127
Institutionalizing Resilience Processes, 129
Benchmarking Progress in Safety and Engagement, 129
Moving Forward, 131
REFERENCES 133
LIST OF ACRONYMS 141
APPENDIXES
A Committee Biographies 145
B Meeting Agendas 151
C Laws, Policies, and Guidelines Driving Dam and Levee Safety in the
United States 153
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