SWOT analysis of breach models for common dike failure mechanisms

The use of breach models includes two tasks: predicting breach characteristics and estimating flow through the breach. Strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunities and threats of different simplified and detailed physically-based breach models are listed following theoretical and practical criteria. According to the theoretical criteria, the breach models that incorporate detailed breaching processes offer more opportunities. In practice however, these models do not necessarily give rise to better results. From the SWOT-analysis, it can be concluded that consolidation of present knowledge towards a comprehensive breaching theory is far from complete. For flood risk analyses, the challenge remains to find equilibrium between detailed process description and practical model implementation and calibration. Nowadays, some modelling suites are black-box models. Others have numerous modelling options that do not improve transparency. Moreover, all models lack validation for real-world case studies, especially for composite dike types