Background

Owners/operators of the flood defence assets have a great responsibility to keep these in such a condition that they will perform as required. As most of these assets are in public spaces, there is also the need to ensure that they are safe when the public interact with them. Existing flood defence assets require recurrent replacement, renovation or reinforcement due to: deterioration, changing design loading, new policies and standards, new requirements or new demands from users. The asset owner/operator needs to be able to predict when replacement or reinforcement is needed within a whole of life cost-effective or cost-beneficial plan process. Riskbased quantitative assessment approaches are now routinely being used to guide this planning.