2006 – Dam Instrumentation or Damn Instrumentation – A South African Perspective

Category: Publications Tags: 2006, Chris Oosthuizen, Dam instrumentation, South Africa

Chris Oosthuizen

A brief overview of dam surveillance is given from a South African perspective and more specifically the perspective of the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF). DWAF’s Ten Commandments for the design of dam monitoring systems serve as introduction and this is followed by a summary of the design steps. The various parameters that can be measured and the South African preferences are discussed briefly followed by a synoptic description of crack and joint monitoring in South Africa. This provides the background for DWAF’s recent developments in 3-D Crack-Tilt gauges. Some of DWAF’s achievements as well as some of the blunders made by the author during the past 30 years are illustrated by means of a few case histories.

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2006 – Meeting the Challenges of Tomorrow, Today – Human Resources – A Changing World
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Karen Soo Kee

Strategic resource management has never been more important than it is today with the aging of the “baby boomers” and their ongoing exodus from the workforce. The vacancies they leave in professions such as engineering are just beginning to be felt and will exponentially escalate over the next few years. Specialised professions such as dam engineering and related professions will be hit the hardest as the knowledge and skills learnt over decades are depleted.

The lack of skilled staff and in fact the lack of interest of young engineers in entering the dam industry is one of the critical challenges for today. How do we attract professional staff into the field of dam safety before the exodus creates a “black hole” that can never be filled? And how can we ensure the knowledge transfer from existing skilled staff to newer staff to retain expertise within the industry?

Another issue for resource management is that tomorrow’s workers, the “X &Y generations”, will be unlike the current and previous generations of workers. These workers will be less likely to have a mortgage, will have fewer children and be more interested in lifestyle, not career. They will be extremely confident, well-educated and very mobile. The future will be a sellers market. The challenge here will not only be to attract and recruit talented workers but also to retain them.
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2006 – PMP ESTIMATES – ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES?
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Janice H. Green and Jeanette Meighen

The Probable Maximum Precipitation (PMP) is defined as ‘the theoretical greatest depth of
precipitation that is physically possible over a particular catchment’. The PMP depths provided by
the Bureau of Meteorology are described as ‘operational estimates of the PMP’ as they represent the best estimate of the PMP depth that can be made, based on the relatively small number of large events that have been observed and our limited knowledge of the causative mechanisms of extreme rainfalls.

Nevertheless, the magnitudes of the PMP depths provided by the Bureau are often met with scepticism concerning their accuracy when compared to large rainfall events which have been observed within catchments and which are, typically, only 20% to 25% of the PMP estimates. The recent increases in the PMP depths, resulting from the revision of the Generalised Tropical Storm Method (GTSMR), have served only to entrench this cynicism.

However, analyses of the magnitudes of the storms in the databases adopted for deriving PMP depths show that these observed storms constituted up to 76% of the corresponding GTSMR PMP depths and up to 80% of the Generalised Southeast Australia Method PMPs for the storm location. Further, comparisons of the PMP depths to large storms observed in similar climatic regions around the world indicate that the PMPs are not outliers.

The results of these analyses are presented for a range of catchment locations and sizes and storm durations and demonstrate that the PMP estimates provided by the Bureau of Meteorology are reasonable and are not unduly large.
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2006 – Lessons from 3 Incidents in the UK and a Question Asked: – Are We Improving at Reservoir Safety
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Andy Hughes

We can all learn by our mistakes and the experience of others. This paper seeks to look at three incidents/accidents which recently occurred in the UK so that others can learn from them. The paper then seeks to answer the question as to whether we are improving in looking after our dams in the UK in respect of reservoir safety.
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2006 – Water Corporation Dam Instrumentation and Monitoring Practice
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Michael Somerford, Alex Gower

The Water Corporation is the principal dam owner in Western Australian with a portfolio of 95 dams. In the absence of dam safety legislation in Western Australia the Corporation has adopted a policy of self regulation. This paper presents how the Corporation’s dam safety policy has been implemented with respect to dam instrumentation and monitoring. It includes a summary of the type of instruments used and experiences with automated data collection systems. The paper concludes that the Corporation does not see a need for a dam instrumentation guideline, however a document summarising current Australian practices and experiences would be of value.
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