Failures of Dams – Challenges to the Present and the Future

Under the aspect of recent flood events in Europe and many other countries in the world the safety of water retaining structures and the threat of dam failures, connected with economical and human damages are facts of our daily life. If we consider that such events are global realities and strike all countries, the world-wide communities are confronted in average with one dam failure per week and with the failure of a large dam every two months. Catastrophic failures of levees and dikes which strike in some times also historical constructions which stand in operation under flood condi-tions during very short periods within a year have changed the opinion that low dams are construc-tions without risks. Every time failures of tailings dams connected with the loss of the constructions and the outbursts of storages are connected with pollutions of environments. After the destruction of any kind of storage facilities investigations are executed to assess the circumstances and investigate the causes and impacts of such events, knowledge which must be stored for the future.