Check dams are commonly constructed around the world for alleviating soil erosion and preventing sedimentation of downstream rivers and reservoirs. Check dams are more vulnerable to failure due to their less stringent flood control standards compared to other dams. Determining the critical precipitation that will result in overtopping of a dam is a useful approach to assessing the risk of failure on a probabilistic basis and for providing early warning in case of an emergency. However, many check dams are built in groups, spreading in several tributaries in cascade forms, comprising a complex network. Determining the critical precipitation for dam overtopping requires a knowledge of its upstream dams on whether they survived or were overtopped during the same storm, while these upstream dams in turn need the information for their upstream dams. The current paper presents an approach of decomposing the dam cluster into (1) the heading dam, (2) border dams, and (3) intermediate dams. The algorithm begins with the border dams that have no upstream dams and proceeds with upgraded maps without the previous border dams until all the dams have been checked. It is believed that this approach is applicable for small-scale check dam systems where the time lag of flood routing can be neglected. As a pilot study, the current paper presents the analytical results for the Wangmaogou Check Dam System that has 22 dams connected in series and parallel. The algorithm clearly identified 7 surviving dams, with the remaining ones being overtopped for a storm of 179.6 mm in 12 h, which is associated with a return period of one in 200 years.

在世界范围内通常建造止水坝以减轻水土流失并防止下游河流和水库的沉积。与其他大坝相比，由于其严格的防洪标准，止水坝更容易遭受破坏。确定将导致大坝翻倒的临界降水量，是一种基于概率评估失败风险并在紧急情况下提供预警的有用方法。但是，许多止水坝是成组建造的，并以级联形式分布在多个支流中，包括一个复杂的网络。要确定大坝翻越的临界降水量，需要了解上游大坝是在同一场暴风雨中幸存还是被超顶的知识，而这些上游大坝又需要上游大坝的信息。本文提出了一种将大坝群分解为（1）掘进水坝，（2）边界水坝和（3）中间水坝的方法。该算法从没有上游水坝的边界水坝开始，到没有先前边界水坝的升级地图继续进行，直到检查完所有水坝为止。可以相信，这种方法适用于可以忽略洪水泛滥的时滞的小型检查坝系统。作为一项试点研究，本论文介绍了王茂沟止水坝系统的分析结果，该系统有22个串联和并联的水坝。该算法清楚地确定了7个尚存的水坝，其余的水坝在12 h内暴过179.6毫米的暴风雨，这与200年中的1年的回归期有关。