Overview of Innovative Life-Risk Analysis Method for the 2012 California Central Valley Flood Protection Plan

AbstractThe State of California’s 2012 Central Valley flood protection plan (CVFPP)—a large-scale reconnaissance-level assessment of flood management problems and potential solutions—formulated a set of broad management alternatives and compared them by assessing risk reduction attributable to each. Both economic risk and life risk were assessed and compared. Economic risk was evaluated with standard U.S. Army Corps of Engineers methods and software. Inputs that described the flood hazard, flood-management system performance, property exposure, and vulnerability to damage were developed by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) using state-of-practice models (hydrologic, hydraulic, geotechnical, and economic) and data. After considering life-risk analysis methods proposed in the literature, for the CVFPP reconnaissance-level analysis, DWR developed and applied an innovative method that leveraged the economic-risk analysis method and its inputs. Measures of hazard and performance remained the s...