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This paper applied a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) approach to solve Shallow Water Equations (SWEs) to study practical dam-break flows. The computational program is based on the open source code SWE-SPHysics, where a Monotone Upstream-centered Scheme for Conservation Laws (MUSCL) reconstruction method is used to improve the Riemann solution with Lax-Friedrichs flux. A virtual boundary particle method is applied to treat the solid boundary. The model is first tested on two benchmark collapses of water columns with the existence of downstream obstacle. Subsequently the model is applied to forecast a prototype dam-break flood, which might occur in South-Gate Gorges Reservoir area of Qinghai Province, China. It shows that the SWE-SPH modeling approach could provide a promising simulation tool for practical dam-break flows in engineering scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]