Superposed Natural Hazards and Pandemics: Breaking Dams, Floods, and COVID-19
Mohammad Amin Hariri‐Ardebili, Upmanu Lall
Abstract
Within the engineering domain, safety issues are often related to engineering design and typically exclude factors such as epidemics, famine, and disease. This article provides a perspective on the reciprocal relationship and interaction between a natural hazard and a simultaneous pandemic outbreak and discusses how a catastrophic dam break, combined with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, poses a risk to human life. The paper uses grey- and peer-reviewed literature to support the discussion and reviews fundamentals of dam safety management, potential loss of life due to a dam break, and the recent evolution in dam risk analysis to account for the COVID-19 outbreak. Conventional risk reduction recommendations, such as quick evacuation and sheltering in communal centers, are revisited in the presence of a pandemic when social distancing is recommended. This perspective manuscript aims to provide insight into the multi-hazard risk problem resulting from a concurring natural hazard and global pandemic.