Introduction

The Oroville Dam is the second largest water reservoir in California and the tallest dam in the U.S., measuring up to 770 feet tall. This Dam has played a vital role in the history of Oroville and surrounding cities. Recently, Lake Oroville has been reaching maximum capacity and overflowing the emergency spillway in the dam. With recent weather conditions, it is uncertain whether the effects of unexpected rainwater could lead the Oroville Dam to collapse. While the Dam has withstood higher amounts of pressure in the past, the level of security of the dam is becoming increasingly more doubtful as the Dam and its parts get older and wear down. If the Dam were to fail and break, thousands of residents and property would be at great risk.

In the recent past, the Oroville dam has come to focus because of a failure in the emergency spillway. In efforts to lower the risk of collapse of the entire dam, the emergency spillway was used to reduce the amount of water by 50ft. However, this has led to a further deepening of soil erosion in the region, which may add to the instability of the dams security. Data needs to be collected, such as water temperature, nightlight data, population density and distribution, and current Landsat images.

This project is aimed at better understanding and visualizing zones that may be affected due to the collapse. This plan is aimed at providing a more accurate and detailed model of a possible area affected by the dam and compare our results to current state and national examples. Our overall goal is to more accurately predict the effects of a major dam failure. The impacts in the specificity of our final project could aid in a more efficient use of resources to regions that are more prone to the effects of this possible massive event.