ORIGINAL PAPER Automated numerical analysis tool for assessing potential bank failures during flooding Tew-Fik Mahdi • Tarek Merabtene Received: 12 January 2010 / Accepted: 9 June 2010 / Published online: 18 August 2010 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 Abstract River embankments failure due to severe flooding is an extremely complex phenomena triggering permanent or temporary modification to the river morphology, river flow and sediment movement. Reliable and automatic prediction of these movements is crucial to properly identify the protective measures for residents living within the inun- dation flood zones. In this regard, BISHOP, a decision tool to automatically predict, at multiple river cross-sections, the slope failure circle with the minimum safety factor has been developed. In this paper, the computer tool BISHOP, named after the simplified Bishop method, is presented. Its applications have proven to be highly efficient in real case studies, where the stability of multiple slope profiles, at different river cross-sections, must be analyzed to establish spatial and temporal evolution of the river banks failures. The integration of the proposed methodology within a comprehensive flow hydrodynamic, sediment transport and landslide calculation has particularly enhanced the evaluation of the flood-risk zone during major flooding. Typical results demonstrating the effectiveness of the developed methodology are demonstrated during the analysis of the evolution of a river reach downstream of a dam a dam break scenario. Keywords Risk area  Slope stability  Safety factor automated search  Simplified Bishop method 1 Introduction Failure of river banks under very exceptional conditions, such as severe flooding or uncontrolled rapid water release from a dam, can permanently modify the river T.-F. Mahdi (&) Department des Ge ´nies Civil, Ge ´ologique et des Mines (CGM), E ´ cole Polytechnique de Montre ´al, C.P. 6079, succ. Centre-ville, Montre ´al, QC H3C 3A7, Canada e-mail: tewfik.mahdi@polymtl.ca T. Merabtene Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Sharjah, 27272 Sharjah, United Arab Emirates 123 Nat Hazards (2010) 55:3–14 DOI 10.1007/s11069-010-9570-1