In the last forty years, dam safety professionals have recognized the importance of preparing emergency actions plans (EAPs) as an effective tool to minimize the consequences of dam failures. In the last 15 years, the National Incident Management System (NIMS) was established and the Incident Command System (ICS) has become a more important emergency response tool. As a result, EAP formats, procedures for testing dam EAPs and training personne...

Internal erosion causes about half of all failures of water-retaining earth embankment dams. Similar statistics apply to levees. Internal erosion occurs when the hydraulic loads imposed by water seeping through the pores or flowing through cracks and openings in the soils in embankments and their foundations generate erosive forces sufficient to overcome the resistance to erosion of those soils. The knowledge of internal erosion processes has...

At a height of 770 feet, Oroville Dam is the tallest dam in the United States. On February 7, 2017, a section of the concrete chute slab of the service spillway at Oroville Dam failed during spillway discharge. Several days later, as the California Department of Water Resources was evaluating and managing discharges through the damaged service spillway during a large rainfall event, the emergency spillway activated for the first time in the pr...

This course will present potential failure modes for chute spillways and ways to design these spillways to minimize the potential for failure. 1. Understanding failure modes such as cavitation and hydraulic jacking that can affect chute spillways. 2. How to evaluate potential spillway design and construction details that could lead to failure modes. 3. How to evaluate potential spillway failure mode4. Understanding design details that can hel...

Many dams and levees have embankment drains, structure underdrains, and relief wells to control seepage through and beneath the dam and piezometers to monitor the performance of these features. Dam and levee owners, managers, and maintenance staff may be uncertain about the function of these features and what maintenance is required. This webinar will summarize seepage principles and terminology in layman's terms and describe the purposes and...

Oroville Dam is the tallest dam in the United States. On February 7, 2017, a section of the concrete chute slab of the service spillway failed during spillway discharge, and several days later the emergency spillway was activated for the first time in the half-century history of the dam, resulting in rapid and severe erosion of the hillside below the emergency spillway weir, and prompting precautionary evacuation of nearly 190,000 downstream r...

Physical Security includes five components; detection, assessment, command and control (policy & procedures), response and engagement. Sadly, most of us in the security vertical focus on only one or two of these components and miss the others. These five elements must be intertwined and seamlessly integrated. If they all aren’t addressed, the “bad guy” wins. In this session we’ll outline what each component is, how...

The enhancement of the stormwater mitigation masterplan involves promoting and preserving natural environments (LIDs, green infrastructure, BMPs) to take advantage of their innate properties to manage excess surface waters while providing levels of treatment as well. The concept of city resilience is incorporated into the entire picture to assess disaster risk and vulnerability by covering all facets of resilience (social, financial, infrastru...

For years, Miami Beach has experienced increased flooding, especially during King Tides. A combination of atmospheric events (rainfall, tropical storms, etc.), tidal effects, hydrological and hydrogeological characteristics, and sea level rise make the situation of the City of Miami Beach unique when compared to other coastal cities locally and regionally. For this reason, the City decided to take aggressive action by setting short, mid, and l...

Join our webcast and learn how the RSA Archer COOP Management solution provides a centralized, consistent, and automated approach to business continuity and disaster recovery planning. Archer allows agencies to build and update COOP plans as well as protect and ensure ongoing operations. Archer's web-based solution enhances an agency security posture by combining business continuity, disaster recovery, and crisis management capabilities into a...