Value of information in dam remediation decision-making

Safety is one of the main concerns in the design and construction of dams due to the significant social and economic costs of an eventual failure of a dam. In fact, beside resulting in a loss of life and property damage, the failure of a dam leads to a loss of economic activity caused by a decrease or, in some instances, cessation of the benefits from different sectors, i.e., agriculture, power generation, tourism, etc. The process of improving the safety of existing dams involves design, cost, construction, and reliability considerations. Often, several possible remedial actions are available. For the purpose optimal decision making, that is selecting the optimal remedial action, complete knowledge about the pertinent parameters, i.e., those parameters affecting the decision, is needed. Unfortunately, such a complete knowledge is seldom available, as natural and parameter uncertainty is always present. Thus, a certain degree of risk is virtually unavoidable in any decision. This paper presents a methodological approach using decision theory, for deriving the optimal dam safety improvement measure. of particular interest is the value of perfect information about specific parameters which affect the expected performance of different decisions. The computation of this value allows the allocation of resources for the enhancement of the expected outcome of the optimal remediation measure.