Premium
Simulating costs of flooding under alternative policies for the Sacramento‐San Joaquin River Delta
Author(s) -
Logan Samuel H.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
water resources research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.863
H-Index - 217
eISSN - 1944-7973
pISSN - 0043-1397
DOI - 10.1029/wr026i005p00799
Subject(s) - san joaquin , levee , delta , land reclamation , flood myth , flooding (psychology) , environmental science , hydrology (agriculture) , cost–benefit analysis , river delta , water resource management , flood control , value (mathematics) , floodplain , geography , geology , engineering , cartography , mathematics , archaeology , statistics , ecology , geotechnical engineering , psychology , soil science , psychotherapist , biology , aerospace engineering
A computer model is used to simulate floods and associated annual and present value costs for California's Sacramento‐San Joaquin Delta. Empirical probability distributions of stability failure and overtopping floods for 46 islands and tracts, conditioned on water levels, are used to simulate floods. When an island floods, damage and reclamation costs are determined. The cost of levee maintenance in nonflood years is also a random variable. Multiple simulations over 50‐year periods provide means and variances of annual costs of policies of reclaiming all flooded islands or reclaiming only some of them. When discounted, the resulting present value of a future stream of these costs may be compared to costs of alternative flood prevention programs (e.g., new levees). Results show that the present value of costs over 50 years for reclaiming all islands differs little from the comparable cost of reclaiming only 13 islands and leaving other islands flooded. Under both policies the present value of costs is less than the first cost of levee projects presented by the Corps of Engineers in the early 1980s.