What is Breach Hydro?
Included in Breach Hydro is a water balance model, Breacher, validated to replicate the breach progression and outflow hydrograph of the HEC-RAS dam break solver. Breacher has been developed to be a text file based solver, simulated with batch (.bat) files to allow for rapid simulations, with benchmarks typically between 0.01 to 0.05 seconds per run on low performance laptops and modelling machines.
Within Breacher is a command to trigger a “Comprehensive” assessment, this allows for the simulation to be compared to a historical dam breach dataset (Azmi and Thomson, 2024) and parameters from common literature (i.e. Froehlich, Hooshyaripor, Xu & Zhang and
Azmi &Thomson’s work on breach width, time, and peak flow).
Also included in the suite is Breacher-Post, a windows based application to allow for reviewing and performing analytics on Breacher results. Ultimately this is to help the user with decision making around suitable parameters and uncertainties / confidence ranges.
Why was it Developed?
Of many reasons, the key reasons are:
- Dam break modelling and selecting the probable hydrograph shape and peak carries substantial uncertainty.
- Running many hydrodynamic models often isn’t practical given simulation times, instabilities, set up time and post-processing results. Breach Hydro allows for ease of setting up and running 1,000 to 100,000 simulations in a short duration.
- HEC-RAS is arguably the most peer reviewed and industry adopted software package for dam break modelling. Replicating breach progression, hydrograph shape and peak flows from HEC-RAS demonstrates the tool adopts similar breach assumptions.
- From our experience working with consultants and asset owners, everyone has their own “unique” spreadsheet, modelling assumptions or approach, creating widely different results for the same dam. As a tool for a comprehensive, user friendly stochastic assessment hasn’t existed, the industry has struggled to establish consistent best practices.
- Continuing the above point, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the outcome of a dam failure or consequence assessment is beholden to the modeller and errors (technical or judgement) that could be made during the modelling process. For asset owners this is a significant concern as errors could lead to an underestimate of risk, and potentially loss of life. Alternatively, the modeller could be “overly cautious” with their assumptions leading to costly maintenance for assets that pose lower risk to what’s been recommended.
- A tool that performs the dam break, compares to literature and historical events (Breacher) and performs the analytics on the results (Breacher-Post) will allow for a consistent approach and replicable result. There is enough flexibility built into Breacher to allow for modellers to still exercise their own judgement, as with each dam, characteristics and risk are unique with the modellers judgement being critical.
Breacher
Breacher is a water balance model, validated to replicate the breach progression and outflow hydrograph of the HEC-RAS dam break solver.
Breacher has been developed to be a text file based solver, simulated with batch (.bat) files to allow for rapid simulations, with benchmarks typically between 0.01 to 0.05 seconds per run on cheap laptops and modelling machines.
Breacher-Post
Included in the suite is Breacher-Post, a windows-based application to allow for reviewing and performing analytics on Breacher results. Ultimately this is to help the user with decision making around suitable parameters and uncertainties / confidence ranges.
Five (5) methods for cutting the data from the summary.bsf have been included in Breacher-Post.