Identifying the effects of parameter uncertainty on the reliability of riverbank stability modelling

Bank retreat is a key process in fluvial dynamics affecting a wide range of physical, ecological and socioeconomic issues in the fluvial environment. To predict the undesirable effects of bank retreat and to inform effective measures to prevent it, a wide range of bank stability models have been presented in the literature. These models typically express bank stability by defining a factor of safety as the ratio of driving and resisting forces acting on the incipient failure block. These forces are affected by a range of controlling factors that include such aspects as the bank profile (bank height and angle), the geotechnical properties of the bank materials, as well as the hydrological status of the riverbanks. In this paper we evaluate the extent to which uncertainties in the parameterization of these controlling factors feed through to influence the reliability of the resulting bank stability estimate. This is achieved by employing a simple model of riverbank stability with respect to planar failure (which is the most common type of bank stability model) in a series of sensitivity tests and Monte Carlo analyses to identify, for each model parameter, the range of values that induce significant changes in the simulated factor of safety. These identified parameter value ranges are compared to empirically derived parameter uncertainties to determine whether they are likely to confound the reliability of the resulting bank stability calculations. Our results show that parameter uncertainties are typically high enough that the likelihood of generating unreliable predictions is typically very high (> ∼ 80% for predictions requiring a precision of < ± 15%). Because parameter uncertainties are derived primarily from the natural variability of the parameters, rather than measurement errors, much more careful attention should be paid to field sampling strategies, such that the parameter uncertainties and consequent prediction unreliabilities can be quantified more robustly.