Pittsfield, Maine – February 13, 2020 – Each year Climate Change Business Journal recognizes outstanding business performance in the climate change industry with the CCBJ Business Achievement Awards. Kleinschmidt is pleased to announce that it was chosen to receive the CCBJ award for Information Technology – Dam Breach Protection, for our McBreach modeling software.
Faced with aging infrastructure, limited resources, dynamic weather events, and the uncertainty of climate change, today’s dam owners must manage risk to protect the public and the built environment. Dam breach modeling is an important component to establishing risk from a potential dam breach event, and HEC-RAS is one of the world’s most popular hydraulic modeling applications used for this purpose.
Recognizing the importance of quantifying the risk but also the shortcomings of traditional deterministic methods for ascertaining the effects of a dam breach event, we introduced McBreach, a software application that runs HEC-RAS dam breach models in a Monte Carlo approach to quantify the high degree of uncertainty inherent in dam breach modeling and to provide a risk-based approach to understanding consequences. Understanding the global interest in this powerful tool, and the significant contribution that could be made, Kleinschmidt offered the software free of charge. The use of tools like McBreach will improve understanding of the consequences of dam breach modeling, which will lead to better dam design, improved emergency action plans, and an overall increase in awareness of the risks associated with dams in an ever-changing and uncertain climate.
“We owe it to the public to do better in the field of dam breach consequence modeling. The traditional deterministic approach frankly does not tell the full story,” says Chris Goodell, Principal Consultant and Developer of McBreach, Kleinschmidt Associates. “McBreach provides us the ability to perform probabilistic dam breach modeling, which opens the door to a better understanding and communication of consequences from a dam breach event, which will improve dam safety decision making both for long-term planning and for real-time emergency action.”
“McBreach is a complete gamechanger, enabling dam owners with a tool to model the hypothetical failure of their dams within a probabilistic framework to provide inundation maps that can now communicate flood risks within the inundation area for emergency management agencies who can then use this information to plan their response actions more effectively given limited resources.” – Eric M. Toth, P.E., Associate Civil Engineer, East Bay Municipal Utility District
The 2019 CCBJ awards will be presented at a special ceremony at the Environmental Industry Summit XVIII in San Diego, Calif. on March 19, 2020. The Environmental Industry Summit is an annual three-day executive retreat hosted by EBI, Inc.
About Kleinschmidt:
Kleinschmidt Associates performs engineering, regulatory and environmental consulting for North American energy companies and governmental agencies who strive to protect and enhance the natural environment without compromising performance. We work at the intersection of regulatory requirements, environmental science, and engineering solutions to achieve our client’s objectives.
About EBI: Founded in 1988, Environmental Business International Inc. (San Diego, Calif.) is a research, publishing and consulting company that specializes in defining emerging markets and generating strategic market intelligence for companies, investors and policymakers. EBI publishes Environmental Business Journal® and Climate Change Business Journal®. EBI also performs contract research for the government and private sector and founded the Environmental Industry Summit Series, four annual conferences event for executives in the environmental industry.