This document provides guidance to help dam owners, in coordination with emergency management authorities, effectively develop and exercise emergency action plans for dams. The purpose of the guidance in this document is to meet that need. This document is an update of FEMA P-64, Federal Guidelines for Dam Safety: Emergency Action Planning for Dam Owners (2004).
This Dam Incident Planning Guide supports state, local, tribal, and territorial emergency managers in planning for dam incidents and failures by summarizing the concepts that a community should consider when creating dam incidentspecifc elements of local emergency operations plans. This guide builds on Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG) 101: Developing and Maintaining Emergency Operations Plans.1 It also provides guidance for dam owners and operators on how to engage with emergency managers prior to an incident to ensure a well-coordinated response. Appendix A provides a general template for a community dam incident plan that can be adapted to meet each communitys needs.
These guidelines encourage strict safety standards in the practices and procedures employed by federal agencies or required of dam owners regulated by the federal agencies. The guidelines provide the most complete and authoritative statement available of the desired management practices for promoting dam safety and the welfare of the public. The guidelines apply to federal practices for dams with a direct federal interest; the guidelines do not attempt to establish technical standards and are not intended to supplant or confict with state or local government responsibilities for the safety of dams under their jurisdiction.
This document provides guidelines for implementing risk-informed decision making in a dam safety program. The intended audience is federal agencies that own or regulate dams. The guidelines could also be applied to non-federally owned or regulated dams that can impact federally owned or regulated facilities; however, this would require the cooperation and involvement of the non-federal dam owner.
This document provides procedures and guidance for best practices concerning embankment dam flter design and construction and represents an effort to collect and disseminate current information and experience having a technical consensus. This document is intended for use by personnel familiar with embankment dams, such as designers, inspectors, construction oversight personnel, and dam safety engineers.
Existing hazard potential classifcation systems are numerous and vary within and between the federal and state sectors. These guidelines set forth a hazard potential classifcation system for dams that is simple, clear, concise, and adaptable to any agencys current system. The intent is to provide straightforward defnitions that can be readily understood by the public and applied uniformly by all federal and state dam safety agencies. The guidelines do not establish how the system will be used, such as prescribing specifc design criteria or prioritizing inspections. Those responsibilities remain with the responsible regulatory authority.
The purpose of this document is to provide dam safety professionals with guidance on how to prepare dam breach inundation modeling studies and conduct mapping that can be used for multiple purposes, including dam safety, hazard mitigation, consequence evaluation, and emergency management including developing emergency action plans. This guidance is intended to provide a consistent approach that can be applied across the country.
These guidelines provide thorough and consistent procedures for selecting and accommodating infow design foods (IDFs), the food fow above which the incremental increase in water surface elevation downstream due to the failure of a dam or other water retaining structure no longer presents an unacceptable additional downstream threat. These guidelines are not intended to provide a complete manual of all procedures for estimating IDFs; the selection of procedures is dependent upon available hydrologic data and individual watershed characteristics.