Although major dams are not designed or intended to fail, the unexpected occurs with tragic consequences. In the unlikely event of such a tragedy, the legal system provides remedies to compensate the victims and their families for their losses. While each state is a separate jurisdiction free to adopt its own legal rules, regulations and theories of relief, they will generally utilize the common-law theories of negligence and strict liability...

The Webinar will have four ½ hour sessions and will begin with a brief review of the Hydraulics 101 Lectures. Uniform flow, specific energy, and gradually varied flow will be covered in the first session. Hydraulic modeling and water surface profile computations will be covered in the second session and geometric data requirements will be addressed in the third session. The final session will concentrate on the development of the Hydro...

The Hydrology 201 Webinar consists of four one-half hour segments. The first segment is a brief review of Hydrology 101 emphasizing some of the important hydrologic issues. The second segment will concentrate on the NRCS procedures to determine the loss rate function and the dimensionless unit hydrograph as it is utilized to transform excess rainfall into runoff. Different methods of determining time of concentration and lag time will be cove...

The webinar will discuss the basics of various non-destructive evaluation (NDE) methods and their applications for investigating dam, spillway and conduit conditions such as freeze-thaw cracking, void, seepage, corrosion of reinforcing, anchor bolts, strength/moduli, and stability. Guidance will be provided as to which NDE methods are useful for diagnosing various conditions of concrete, masonry, earthen and steel materials. The webinar will...

Fluid Mechanics provides the theoretical foundation for hydraulics, which focuses on the engineering uses of fluid properties. Hydraulic topics include concepts such as pipe flow, dam design, pumps, hydropower, flow measurements, and open channel flow. The flow of water in an open channel in natural rivers is common, however, the solution to estimate water surface elevations can be a difficult problem when everything is considered, especially...

Hydrology is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water throughout the Earth, and thus addresses both the hydrologic cycle and water resources. A practitioner of hydrology is a hydrologist, working within the fields of earth or environmental science, physical geography or civil and environmental engineering. Broadly, hydrology is classified into two groups. The scientific hydrology is concerned mainly with the academic aspec...

As dams deteriorate, or as their purpose and benefits diminish, there may come a time when the appropriate action is to decommission the dam. For some dams, this can be a very simple, rapid and inexpensive undertaking. For other dams, it can be a very complex and costly process, requiring years to accomplish. The purpose of this webinar is to provide an overview of recent trends in dam decommissioning in the United States with an emphasis on t...

Hydrologic hazard curves are critical flood loading inputs for dam and levee safety risk assessments. Over the past decade, some Federal agencies have developed and applied new tools and data sets to estimate hydrologic hazard curves, which are graphs of peak flows, volume, or reservoir stages versus Annual Exceedance Probability (AEP). Hydrologic hazard curves provide a full probability distribution for the flood hazard, covering the range of...

The webinar consist of two sessions. Session 1 will be an overview of Geophysical methods applicable to dams and levees, how theory behind the methodologies, and the strengths and limitations of each method. This session will also cover what additional investigations, such as drilling, are necessary to calibrate the geophysical data in order to provide a holistic evaluation of the subsurface conditions and how these conditions can affect dam a...