Internal erosion occurring at federal (and nonfederal) embankment dams and levees poses a threat of failure and potential risk to public safety. This document presents a summary of current federal practices for monitoring and measuring seepage, identifying potential failure modes related to internal erosion, assessing risk related to internal erosion, and remediating internal erosion. While research continues into these processes, this document attempts to present the best understanding based on current federal agency practice. Hence, very recent or new, unproven technologies are not discussed.
Risk-Informed Decision-Making (RIDM) is a method of dam safety evaluation that uses the likelihood of loading, system response given the loading, and consequences of failure to estimate risk. This risk estimate can be used to inform decisions regarding dam safety investments. This approach has many benefits including a greatly improved understanding of the safety of the dam and identifying dam safety vulnerabilities that have not been identified using standards-based evaluation techniques. This website includes dam safety guidelines to evaluate consequences of failure and is intended for use on water dams.