Influence of Monitoring on Investment Planning of Flood Defence Systems

Abstract

Many flood defences in the Netherlands will have to be reinforced in the coming decades. Many dikes do not fulfill the safety standard due to geotechnical failure modes, largely due to epistemic, reducible uncertainties. . The Value of Information is a measure to indicate beforehand whether an investment towards reducing epistemic uncertainty is economically attractive. This paper investigates how reduction of the epistemic uncertainty in aquifer permeability might influence the Total Cost of a dike reinforcement, and the choice of reinforcement method. From the case study it is shown that the Value of Information from measurements strongly depends on firstly, whether the overall prioritization of investment for a larger dike segment is influenced, and secondly, whether the local reinforcement decision is sensitive to the parameter for which uncertainty is reduced.