To protect the health and safety of attendees, this event has been moved to online-only due to COVID-19 concerns. This course provides broad coverage of stability analysis for embankment dams. Topics addressed in the course include soil stress-strain behavior, shear strength selection, field and laboratory testing methods, slope stability analysis methods, slope stability analysis loading cases, seepage as related to stability analysis, and st...

Five Learning Objectives of This Course: Scour of rock is a dam safety concern that requires meaningful quantification It is possible to predict the scour potential of rock using data normally available for dam design High-resolution remote sensing and monitoring can facilitate improved scour assessment Course attendees should develop an understanding of processes and key drivers/controls for scour of rocks Course attendees should be able to e...

This webinar will review the design and construction of filters and drains for embankment dams. Specific topics covered will include 1) principles of filters and drains, 2) locations and configurations of filters and drains in embankment dams (for both new dams and dam rehabilitations) , 3) design guidelines for filters and drains, 4) evaluations of filters and drains in existing embankment dams, and 5) practical considerations for design and...

This is the second of a two-part series on overtopping protection systems for embankment and concrete dams (Register for Intro to Overtopping Protection Systems). Many dams today have insufficient spillway capacity and may be overtopped during large floods below the regulatory requirement. In recent years, dam overtopping protection has become increasingly popular as a means to provide additional flood release capacity when more conventional m...

This is the first of a two-part series on overtopping protection systems for embankment and concrete dams. Five Learning Objectives of This Course: Exposure to wide range of potential overtopping protection systems for dams. Case histories of design applications and performance. Limitations of use, including infrequent operation and/or low hazard conditions. Advantages of one system relative to the others, including cost. Current research and...

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...

This webinar will provide an overview of multiple dam design and dam safety resources available from the USDA of Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). The overview will include a presentation on the NRCS history of building dams and dam safety. The policy presentation will focus on key dam design and dam safety elements in the NRCS General Manual, the National Engineering Manual and NRCS directives process. The presentation on NRCS de...

Potential failure modes analyses (PFMA) was first used in dam safety over twenty years ago and although thousands of PFMA workshops have been conducted since it was first introduced, the use and application of PFMAs is still mostly limited to larger federal agencies and occasionally by others on larger projects. PFMA is a tool and a framework to evaluate dam and levee safety. It has fundamentally changed the way many now approach assessing and...

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...

Lawn Lake Dam, located in Rocky Mountain National Park failed suddenly and catastrophically on a sunny day in July 1982, and resulted in over $30 million dollars in damage and the loss of 3 lives. This webinar will explore the history of the dam, construction features responsible for the failure, the failure event and emergency response, the long legal process to assign liability for the failure and the overall impacts to the Town of Estes Par...