Technical standards for debris flow barriers and breakers

Abstract

Debris flow barriers and breakers protect human settlements, infrastructure and supply lines from tor- rential disasters by dissipating the energy of debris flow (floods), dosing (filtering) coarse solid compo- nents and deflecting the flows from the areas at risk. The function and design of these structures has to fol- low the principles of the EUROCODE standards. In order to establish a comprehensive “state-of-the-art” for torrent control engineering an interdisciplinary working group (ON-K 256) was established at the Austrian Standards Institute (ASI) in 2006, which develops new technical standards for load models, design, dimensioning and life cycle assessment (tech- nical standard ONR 24800 - series). The paper sum- marizes the state of development concerning the func- tion and design of debris flow barriers and breakers.