China Water Resources

China ranks frst in the world in terms of the number of reservoir dams. Homogeneous earth dams constitute one of the important dam types in China, most of which were built between the 1950s and 1970s. Affected by factors such as low design standards at that time, limited construction conditions, and long-term operational aging, these dams currently suffer from low design flood standards, prominent flood discharge defciencies, and weak collapse resistance of downstream dam slopes. Dam failures of homogeneous earth dams accounted for 85% of the total number of dam failures nationwide from 1954 to 2021, with overtopping erosion being the primary cause. With the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, the flood control standards of homogeneous earth dams are struggling to adapt to current climatic conditions, and the flood control defciencies are becoming increasingly prominent. In 2026, incidents at the Liulan Reservoir and other projects in Guangxi exposed the widespread problem of insufficient flood control capacity among similar projects in China when coping with extreme rainfall-induced floods. Based on national dam failure statistics and an analysis of the current safety status of homogeneous earth dams, combined with the challenges facing their flood control safety, this paper proposed a set of systematic measures: raising the flood control design standards, enhancing the capacity for exceeding flood discharge, implementing anti-scour protection and retroftting of dam crests and slopes, optimizing and improving the slope drainage system, upgrading the automatic dam monitoring system, improving forecasting and early warning mechanisms, and refning the emergency response mechanism for overtopping incidents. These measures are intended to address the flood control defciencies of homogeneous earth dams, fundamentally enhance their flood control and disaster resistance capabilities, and provide technical references for the risk removal and reinforcement of such dams in China.