Using artificial intelligence to locate risky dams

In the U.S., 15,498 of the more than 88,000 dams in the country are categorized as having high hazard potential--meaning that if they fail, they could kill people. As of 2015, some 2,000 of these high hazard dams are in need of repair. With a hefty price tag estimated at around $20 billion, those repairs aren't going to happen overnight. A project out of the Columbia Water Center aims to help guide the process of repairing or decommissioning these dams. The team is pinpointing the riskiest dams, using climate models, GIS data, and artificial intelligence to predict the likelihood that rainfall will overtop a dam and cause significant downstream damages to population and critical infrastructure.