Abstract—Thanks to the increasingly-improved flood-control engineering projects in the lower reaches of the Yellow River safety has been maintained over the past 50 years. Nonetheless, the rising trend of the riverway bed of the lower reaches has not been reversed. This has been a potential hazard to the local people. Using various investigation methods we basically ascertain the geological environment of the lower reaches including active faults, crust uplift, ground subsidence, seismic activities, engineering conditions of dike foundation, hydraulic conditions and fluvial geomorphology, etc. Based on the comprehensive analysis of the instability modes and corresponding influencing factors we choose fuzzy comprehensive assessing method to assess the ground stability, dike-foundation stability and riverway stability and general stability of the suspended river. The results show that the stability of the suspended river of the Yellow River could be classified into four grades, i.e. “basically stable, unstable, very unstable and extremely unstable” and 11 segments. Taking into account future tectonic faults, earthquake, difference between riverway and ground outside riverway, riverway shapes, historical breaches, ground fluidization and seepage deformation, etc., we further find out 17 the most unstable sites, among of which 7 are the most possible breaching sites, i.e. Wuzhi, Zhongmou, Kaifeng, Fengqiu, Dongming, Changyuan and Dong’e. Calculations of the possible inundation scope and area, number of affected people, economic losses and environment damage etc. Any of them, if breached, could bring about disaster results in the lower reaches of the Yellow River.
Index Terms—Lower reaches of the Yellow River, geo-environmental characteristics, suspended river, stability assessment, risk analysis
Changli Liu is with Institute of Hydrogeology and Environmental
Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Shijiazhuang, 050061,
China (e-mail: urgeology@163.com).
[PDF]
Cite:Changli Liu, Xiuyan Wang, Miying Yin, Hongbing Hou, and Hua Dong, "Risk Analysis and Stability Assessment on the Suspended River of the Lower Reaches of the Yellow River," Journal of Clean Energy Technologies vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 187-190, 2014.
