Innovations & dam safety |
Above: Dam Model Competition Winners at Dam Safety 2023, University of Wisconsin- Platteville
Above right: 2023-2024 ASDSO Memorial Undergraduate Scholarship Recipient William Devers and Committee Chair Ben Webster
The awards include:
National Dam Rehabilitation Project of the Year which recognises a unique remedial design, for a project of any size, that advances the state-of- the-art in the field of dam safety and exemplifies the professional engineering and construction standards that dam safety requires. Regional Dam Safety Awards recognise smaller projects, dam owners, and other entities that have made an impact at a local, county, state, or regional level. While efforts may not be state-of-the-art or impact the industry nationally, recipients have made exemplary community contributions. The awards recognise collaboration, community impact, innovative funding, cost-effectiveness, and social and environmental responsibility. The Media Outreach Award recognises media outlets and journalists whose work on dam safety issues has enhanced the public understanding of dams’ impact on society, their role as key components of public infrastructure, ramifications of dam safety incidents, or other noteworthy contributions to dam safety.
Bruce Tschantz Public Safety at Dams Award will be given to a person who takes on the role of “local champion” and works to improve public safety around dams. Young Professional of the Year recognises members under 35 years of age working in the dam safety field who made outstanding contributions to the association, their respective organisation, or the dam safety industry in general. Terry L. Hampton Medal will be awarded for outstanding contributions to research and/or practice in hydrologic and hydraulic engineering for dams.
Danny McCook Medal for outstanding contributions to research or practice in geotechnical engineering for dams.
Further details
For more information see
www.damsafety.org
Winners of the Dam Model competition will also have a chance to present their winning entry at the conference. This targets university student groups, student branches of professional organisations, K-12 classes, or other students interested in dam safety to construct a tabletop sized dam model and come up with a plan on how to best use the model to educate the public on dam safety. Unique aspects of the proposed model can include dam break, hydropower, gated spillways, rainfall-runoff, etc while special consideration will be given to unique uses at children’s museums and schools.
24 | March 2024 |
www.waterpowermagazine.com
ASDSO is also currently accepting applications for the 2024/2025 Undergraduate Scholarship Programme. Established in 1992, it recognises that one of the keys to achieving the association’s goals is the development of well-trained technical persons. As of 2023, more than 50 scholarships have been awarded totalling over $250,000. Annually ASDSO awards a scholarship to at least one undergraduate senior who has demonstrated an interest in pursuing a career related to dam design, construction, and operation and is studying in a related field. William “Billy” Devers is a senior at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont, working towards a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a minor in construction management. Last year he was awarded a US$20,000 scholarship and a travel stipend to attend the Dam Safety 2023 conference in California. Billy has found great interest in dams and water
resources engineering through his college, internships, and general love for the outdoors. He worked for the Vermont Dam Safety Programme in the summer of 2022, inspecting and writing reports on 95 dams. In the summer of 2023, he interned at Aldrich & Elliott Water Resources Engineering, a small private consulting firm in Vermont, where he learned about hydraulics engineering for water and wastewater management.
Toolbox
In other news, ASDSO recently launched a new website called the Dam Safety Toolbox. Through this new website, any professional can quickly build their knowledge of dam safety basics through resources curated by leaders in the industry. Users can explore dozens of existing pages on dam safety fundamentals, management, and technical topics. It is a wiki-based website allowing dam safety
professionals to access essential resources quickly and easily. Like any wiki, users can suggest edits to existing content or create new pages. ASDSO members can edit directly on the website, and non- members can submit edits using a PDF form. All the edits are reviewed and approved by a committee of ASDSO members to ensure reliability. There is also a free one-hour webinar on navigating and editing the website on 2 April 2024. Gannett Fleming was responsible for developing the website and initial content and many ASDSO volunteers contributed through the Technical Knowledge Base Task Force, Dam Design and Construction Committee, and the website subcommittee.
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