Abstract: This paper strives to emphasize the importance and necessity of vigorous dam safety work in fully investigating all possible scenarios of dam failure and their likelihood based on the conditions of dams. This is very much analogous to assessing one’ s overall health and the likelihood to which an individual is susceptible to various diseases or deficiencies. It has been found that a variety of risk factors may be integrated with one another which can act as root causes of potential damfailure. Therefore, appropriate dam risk management strategies with short /long term goals can be achieved by exercising the risk- driven based potential failure mode analysis (PFMA). However, it must be understood that uncertainties associated with the planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance of damengineering systems are present. Thus no damcan ever be completely “fail- safe”. Considering this, the concept of risk control by way of working through various critical scenarios and exploring/postulating all possible unknowns is necessary to better understand the uncertainties and minimize their impact to risks. Adopting such a process allows a competent dam safety engineer to remove /avoid risk factors by assessing the dam’s “health” through its current conditions against all available information on it.

摘要： 从浅显的医理, 说明大坝安全工作的重要性和必要性。以宏观大格局和微观小格局两者平衡的观点洞悉PFMs, 分析溃坝发生前的各种风险信息, 以治标为手段、治本为目的, 做好大坝安全工作。因多种风险因素影响, 大坝安全“零风险”不易做到, 须有风险控制概念。从问题根源降低溃坝风险, 标本兼治, 对症下药, 有为者当如是。