Abstract: Floods caused by dam failure are more destructive than rain gush flood and ice flood. To better serve the flood control and disaster prevention planning, predictive quantitative assessment and spatial distribution mapping for dam break loss were conducted. Life loss was selected as an assessment example. With spatial information technology in data management, analysis and visualization, the characteristic parameters of dam break loss were obtained, and by using life loss model, the life loss were quantitatively estimated, and finally the spatial distribution results were displayed by maps. Results showed that alarm time is important to life loss. As the alarm takes place earlier, the life loss reduces significantly.

Key words: spatial information technology, dam break, flood disaster loss, quantitative estimation, predictive assessment