This is an interactive course designed to help participants learn about key tools that will help improve emergency preparedness and enhance communication during dam and levee failures and incidents. Participants will gain a better understanding of the emergency action planning process, including evacuation planning and emergency response methods. Key takeaways attendees will receive from this course: Learn how to improve the integrated operati...

This webinar will review field inspection of concrete structures for dams, water conveyances, and levees. Specific topics to be covered will include foundation preparation, reinforcing steel inspection, embedded items, formwork, concrete joints, waterstop installation, and concrete mixes and placement. Five learning objectives of this webinar: Pre-construction preparation that should be completed prior to the start of construction of a concret...

Many dam failures have been averted by dam owners and engineers taking quick and effective action to intervene and stop an active dam failure from progressing. The focus of this webinar is to present the most common failure modes at dams and provide information on actions that can be taken to prevent or delay each failure mode. Case studies will be used to show examples of successful interventions. Actions that could potentially do harm and ma...

Dam engineering is about dams, but is done by and for people. As a result, in order to achieve dam safety, we need to understand not just dams, but also the people (including ourselves) involved in designing, constructing, operating, maintaining, and benefitting from them. Social scientists have been studying people scientifically for more than a century, and we are now at a point historically where the social sciences have generated valuable...

Join us on October 13, from 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm for the Delhi Dam Failure. This webinar will involve the presentation of the Delhi Dam failure case history. Delhi Dam failed on July 24, 2010 during a record storm. The failure was a result of a number of factors all contributing to the ultimate failure. The review of dam failure by a forensic team allowed for a good understanding of the mechanisms that lead to failure. Analysis were performed wh...

Join us on August 11, from 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm Eastern for Low-Level Conduits – What Can Go Wrong, How to Inspect, How to Repair? This course will provide an overview of commonly observed issues associated with the most common type of spillway for relatively small dams (riser and low-level conduit). Importantly, the presentation will summarize methods to evaluate the condition of existing conduits and present common methods to repair and/...

Together Paul and Dean have offered this seminar 19 times in 17 states and it has been attended by more than 1,000 students. The seminar provides comprehensive instruction in inspection and evaluation techniques for dams. The principles, concepts and procedures taught will be readily adaptable to any organization conducting dam inspections and evaluating their compliance with current design standards. Participants learn about a variety of dam...

To protect the health and safety of attendees, this event has been moved to online-only due to COVID-19 concerns. This 2.5-day introductory course is designed to be a participatory, interactive workshop, which will cover the basic elements required to understand and evaluate seepage-related issues for earth dams. The first day begins with providing an understanding of why seepage mechanisms in earth dams are important to dam safety. Discussion...

Join us on June 9, from 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm Eastern for The 1979 Machhu Dam Disaster: Social Origins and Social Consequences. In this webinar, Utpal Sandesara and Tom Wooten will discuss their book “No One Had a Tongue to Speak: The Untold Story of One of History’s Deadliest Floods.” The course will cover the social causes and social consequences of the 1979 failure of the Machhu Dam-II in Gujarat, India. The flood wiped out d...

To protect the health and safety of attendees, this event has been moved to online-only due to COVID-19 concerns. The objective of this course will be to provide a comprehensive presentation of the significant principles and concepts of soil mechanics to the participants. The material will be presented with emphasis on the basic soil mechanics principles prerequisite to further study for design or rehabilitation of earth embankment dams. This...