Global Sensitivity Analysis of Groundwater Related Dike Stability under Extreme Loading Conditions
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Department of Physical Geography, Faculty of Geosciences, University of Utrecht, P.O. Box 80115, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands
2
Unit Soil and Groundwater Systems, Deltares, P.O. Box 85467, 3508 AL Utrecht, The Netherlands
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Renato Morbidelli
Water 2021, 13(21), 3041; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13213041
Received: 21 September 2021
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Revised: 25 October 2021
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Accepted: 26 October 2021
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Published: 1 November 2021
(This article belongs to the Section Hydrogeology)
With up to 15% of the world’s population being protected by dikes from flooding, climate-change-induced river levels may dramatically increase the flood risk of these societies. Reliable assessments of dike stability will become increasingly important, but groundwater flow through dikes is often oversimplified due to limited understanding of the important process parameters. To improve the understanding of these parameters, we performed a global sensitivity analysis on a comprehensive hydro-stability model. The sensitivity analysis encompassed fifteen parameters related to geometry, drainage conditions and material properties. The following three sensitivity settings were selected to characterize model behavior: parameter prioritization, trend identification and interaction qualification. The first two showed that dike stability is mostly dependent on the dike slope, followed by the type of subsurface material. Interaction quantification indicated a very prominent interaction between the dike and subsurface material, as it influences both groundwater conditions and dike stability directly. Despite our relatively simple model setup, a database containing the results of the extensive Monte Carlo analysis succeeded in finding most of the unsafe sections identified by the official inspection results. This supports the applicability of our results and demonstrates that both geometry and subsurface parameters affect the groundwater conditions and dike stability.
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Keywords:
groundwater; flood defenses; sensitivity analysis; dike stability; flood safety
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MDPI and ACS Style
van Woerkom, T.; van Beek, R.; Middelkoop, H.; Bierkens, M.F.P. Global Sensitivity Analysis of Groundwater Related Dike Stability under Extreme Loading Conditions. Water 2021, 13, 3041. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13213041
AMA Style
van Woerkom T, van Beek R, Middelkoop H, Bierkens MFP. Global Sensitivity Analysis of Groundwater Related Dike Stability under Extreme Loading Conditions. Water. 2021; 13(21):3041. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13213041
Chicago/Turabian Stylevan Woerkom, Teun, Rens van Beek, Hans Middelkoop, and Marc F. P. Bierkens. 2021. "Global Sensitivity Analysis of Groundwater Related Dike Stability under Extreme Loading Conditions" Water 13, no. 21: 3041. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13213041
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