As the world’s population increases, the rising demand for water will be compounded further by the need to sustain economic growth (Vörösmarty et al. 2000). According to one report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the stress on freshwater resources is expected to significantly magnify and spread to other regions of the world by 2025 (see Fig. 1; UNEP 2002). Historically, one of...

The restorative potential of dam removal on ecosystem function depends on the reversibility of dam effects and its operations. While dam removal is an established engineering practice, the need for an understanding of the ecological response remains. We used paleoflood hydrology, hydrologic modeling, and aerial photo interpretation to investigate the long-term ecologic responses to dam failure ...

This paper firstly described the dam break in the aspects of theories and models. Break parameters prediction, the understanding of dam break mechanics, peak outflow prediction were shown as the essential for the dam break analysis, and eventually determined the loss of the damages. Secondly, as an application example, Foster Joseph Sayers Dam break was further modeled and analyzed using USACE ...

Dam safety is a significant issue being taken seriously worldwide. However, in Australia, although much attention is being devoted to the mediumto large-scale dams, minimal attention is being paid to the serious potential problems associated with smaller dams, particularly the potential cumulative safety threats they pose in catchments. This paper establishes the significance of this problem an...

In engineering system control, human beings can play various key roles, in particular concerning measurement, global assessment and decision. This paper focuses on methods that allow the representation and aggregation of heterogeneous data (sensory evaluations, physical measurements, outputs of mathematical models, etc.) used in a global dam assessment process. It is acknowledged that in such c...

Flood disasters from dam breaks cause serious loss of human life and immense damage to infrastructure and economic stability. The application of Geographic Information System technology integrated with hydrological modeling for mapping flood-inundated areas and depth can play a momentous role in further minimizing the risk and possible damage. In the present study, base terrain data, hydrologic...

Beaver have been referred to as ecosystem engineers because of the large impacts their dam building activities have on the landscape; however, the benefits they may provide to fluvial fish species has been debated. We conducted a watershed-scale experiment to test how increasing beaver dam and colony persistence in a highly degraded incised stream affects the freshwater production of steelhead ...

Based on geological information of the Fengman dam, the seepage flow of the dam is analyzed. There are many different affecting factors on seepage problem, for example: the effect of the parameter of concrete, cut-off wall, the permeability coefficient of cut-off wall, drainage hole and grout curtains etc. On the basis of the research, the seepage control mechanism and effectiveness of the seep...

In recent years, the importance of economical considerations in the field of dam engineering has motivated many researchers to propose new methods for minimizing the cost of dames and in particular arch dams. This paper presents a method for shape optimization of double curvature arch dams corresponding to minimum construction cost while satisfying different constraints such as natural frequenc...