Based on the interviews with seasoned engineers previously involved
in various risk assessment processes, it takes approximately
4 to 6 weeks to collect all of the information required for a risk
assessment, with some variation based on the number of individuals
collecting information, hours per week spent on the task, whether
the information was previously organized or not, and the amount of
information to be collected. Table 1 shows the number of documents
collected and reviewed by the engineers during the risk
assessment process of three different dams. These documents include
drawings, instrumentation readings, reports (daily/weekly/
monthly/annually), memos, photos, and maps, which are stored either
digitally or in paper form. The differences in the number of
documents are due to the availability of the documents and the service
life of the dams. As demonstrated in Table 1, regardless of the
variation, a large number of documents need to be studied in a short
time frame by engineers to get a holistic understanding of a dam’s
behavior.