National Dam Safety Program Publications
The National Dam Safety Program provides a variety of publications, including:
- Research Needs Workshop Reports
- Technical Manuals, Guides and Reports
- Technical Advisories
- Safety Series Fact Sheets
- Response and Recovery (R&R) Dam Response Operations Matrices
- Dam Safety & Risk MAP/Flood Mapping Studies Fact Sheet Series
- DSS-WISE Fact Sheets
- FEMA P-1015, Technical Manual: Overtopping Protection for Dams (ZIP, 410MB)
Search for Dam Safety Publications
Search for documents below, or view our pages on Federal Guidelines, National Dam Safety Program Information, Resources for the General Public, or Resources for States.
You can order publications from the FEMA Distribution Center.
In this document, failure is considered the uncontrolled release of the reservoir. However, this may or may not always be the case given the purpose or hazard of a structure or given an agency’s requirements for a structure. How do we determine if a concrete dam can fail? Failure results from sequences of events that must follow one upon another. Because a dam cannot fail without the full chain of events, conclusively ruling out any event justifies concluding that the dam will not fail. This document introduces event trees. Event trees are pictorial representations of the sequences of events (called nodes) leading to failure. The possibility of each node occurring is evaluated by analyses. It is the experience of the authors that engineers often rush to analysis without consideration of the failure process. As a result, expensive analyses are done that are not needed, waste time, and often do not answer the question of whether a dam will fail. Examples presented are for instructional purposes only. Assumptions made, material properties used, and loadings were selected to illustrate structural analysis methods and failure modes, and are not generally applicable.
2020 NDSP Technical Seminar Presentation
Silver Jackets in Risk Communication and Risk Management | Tony Krause
From October 1 through 5, 2015, heavy rainfall over parts of South Carolina resulted in the failure of 49 state-regulated dams, one federally regulated dam, two sections of the levee adjacent to the Columbia Canal, and many unregulated dams. In support of recovery efforts, FEMA Mitigation deployed a team to assist in the assessments of dams and provide expertise and insights to the State of South Carolina, FEMA Headquarters, FEMA Region IV, and Joint Field Office leadership.
In coordination with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SC DHEC) to ensure accuracy and consistency with their regulations and procedures, Recovery Advisories were developed to help dam owners in the post disaster recovery. The advisories were provided to SC DHEC for distribution to dam owners.
FEMA DR-4286C | This Response and Recovery (R&R) Dam Response Operations Matrix was primarily developed for stakeholder outreach, and as a reference for emergency or disaster dam-related response or recovery operations in South Carolina.
Safe dam operation includes comprehensive, state-of-practice guidance on timely inspection and observation of wildlife damages, accurate wildlife identification and mitigation, and appropriate dam design, repair, and preventive measures. This technical manual provides guidance to dam specialists, including dam owners, operators, inspectors, state dam officials, and consulting engineers, in the following areas: (1) the impacts wildlife can have on earthen dams; (2) habitat, range, description, and behavior of common nuisance wildlife to aid in the proper identification at the dam; (3) state-of-practice methods to prevent and mitigate adverse wildlife impacts on earthen dams; and (4) state-of-practice design guidance for repair and preventive design associated with nuisance wildlife intrusion.
Safe dam operation includes comprehensive, state-of-practice guidance on timely inspection and observation of wildlife damages, accurate wildlife identification and mitigation, and appropriate dam design, repair, and preventive measures. This technical manual provides guidance to dam specialists, including dam owners, operators, inspectors, state dam officials, and consulting engineers, in the following areas: (1) the impacts wildlife can have on earthen dams; (2) habitat, range, description, and behavior of common nuisance wildlife to aid in the proper identification at the dam; (3) state-of-practice methods to prevent and mitigate adverse wildlife impacts on earthen dams; and (4) state-of-practice design guidance for repair and preventive design associated with nuisance wildlife intrusion.
Tree and woody vegetation penetrations of earthen dams and their appurtenances have been demonstrated to be causes of serious structural deterioration and distress that can result in the failure of earthen dams. Damage to earthen dams resulting from plant and animal penetrations is a significant dam safety issue in the United States. The purpose of this technical manual for Dam Owners is to advance awareness of the characteristics and seriousness of dam safety problems associated with tree and woody vegetation growth impacts on earthen dams, provide a higher level of understanding of dam safety issues by reviewing current damage control policies, provide state-of-practice guidance for remediation design considerations associated with damages associated with tree and woody vegetation growth on earthen dams, and to provide the rationale and state-of-practice techniques and procedures for the management of desirable and undesirable vegetation on earthen dams.