Developing a probabilistic multicriteria method for river levee performance evaluation in support of diagnostic analysis

France comprises 10,000 km of river levees. Those levees show highly variable performances caused by the various types of design and construction, age, environment, loadings, and maintenance and repair works performed on them. Available information on levees also varies in quality and most often proves to be incomplete, uncertain, or imprecise. Based on this, a method for providing a quantitative evaluation of levee performance is suggested. Such a method, based on a multicriteria decision-making model and subjective probabilities, takes all available pieces of information into account—design, construction, visual inspections, and geophysical and geotechnical investigations—and reckons them with the level of uncertainty of the available data. This method provides decision-making support in identifying the least efficient sections and setting up investigation and maintenance programs.