Estimating Dike Breach Length from Historical Data

Flood fighting activity in preceding centuries and systematic research conducted since 1995 have produced a collection of more than 2200 historical data regarding dike failures in the Carpathian Basin. Despite the gaps in and the frequent errors of historical data, the high number of dike breaches facilitates statistical processing and the evaluation of the results allows us to draw interesting conclusions and lessons for future generations, for instance regarding the length of levee breaches. The effect of human intervention is easy to trace in the system of flood control on the basis of the changing number and length of levee breaches.