despite the numerous advantages of large dams, there is still a deep suspicion about the real,long-term benefits and costs of their construction. land use change on a vast scale, displacement of a largepopulation of indigenous people, loss of biodiversity and production of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as environmental, socioeconomic and cultural consequences resulting therefrom, indicate c...

This study presents shape optimization of a gravity dam imposing stability and principal stress constraints. A gravity dam is a large scale hydraulic structure consisting of huge amount of concrete material. Hence, an optimum design gives a cost-benefit structure due to the fact that small changes in shape of dam cross-section leads to large saving of concrete volume. T...

despite the numerous advantages of large dams, there is still a deep suspicion about the real,long-term benefits and costs of their construction. land use change on a vast scale, displacement of a largepopulation of indigenous people, loss of biodiversity and production of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as environmental, socioeconomic and cultural consequences resulting therefrom, indicate c...

Large-scale dams are controversial public infrastructure projects due to the unevenly distributed benefits and losses to local regions. The central government can make redistributive fiscal transfers to attenuate the impacts and reduce the inequality among local governments, but whether large-scale dam projects are Pareto improving is still a question. Using the geographic variation of dam impa...

This paper applies the tool of social impact assessment (SIA) to understand the effects of large dam projects on human communities. We draw upon data from two recent SIA projects: the Lesotho Highlands Water Project in Southern Africa, and the Manwan Dam, located on the upper Mekong River in southwestern China. These two cases allow us to examine the social impacts of large dam projects through...

Dam breaks of landslide dams are always accompanied by large numbers of casualties, a large loss of property, and negative influences on the downstream ecology and environment. This study uses the Jiadanwan landslide dam, created by the Wenchuan earthquake, as a case study example. Several laboratory experiments are carried out to analyse the dam-break mechanism of the landslide dam. The differ...

Dam break analysis plays a very important role in the risk assessment of dams. Large dams pose significantly higher risks to the people and property downstream of the dam as compared to smaller dams. So the flooding risk due to the possible failure of large dams is more crucial. The simulation of exceptional events characterized by high hydraulic and hydro-geologic risk is an actual problem for...