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Flood Emergency Response Plan (ERP) is a plan that guides responsibilities for proper operation of Sultan Abu Bakar (SAB) dam in response to emergency incidents affecting the dam by high water storage capacity. Based on this study, four major responsibilities are needed for SAB dam owing to protect any probable risk for downstream which can be Incident Commander, Deputy Incident Commander, On-scene Commander and Civil Engineer. Having organisation charts based on ERP exercise can be helpful for decreasing the probable risks in any projects such as Abu Bakar Dam and it is a way to identify and suspected and actual dam safety emergencies. A dam safety emergency is an event, which could potentially lead to dam break and need to be taken care of a massive plan. To mitigate the hydro hazard due to dam break, UNITEN has developed a new application software known as INSPiRE (Interactive Dam Safety Decision Support System). INSPiRE, as an intelligent dam safety software, is developed to address emergencies, which demand fast, decision making and effective multi-agency collaboration due to SAB dam break event. INSPiRE will contribute towards the sustainability of SAB dam’s owner as corporate reputations can be ruined through dam structural failures that can affect the economy of the nation and enhance the quality of life of the people.

Dams require high-volume of construction materials and operations over the life cycle. This paper aims to select a proper type of dam structure that can significantly contribute to the sustainability of dam projects.

This research proposes a complementary fuel consumption and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission assessment method for the alternate dam structure types to assist decision-makers in selecting sustainable choices. Related equations are developed for two common earthen and rock-fill dam structures types in Iran. These equations are then successfully applied to two real dam project cases where the significance of the achieved results are assessed and discussed.

The achieved results of the case studies demonstrate a high deviation of up to 41.3% in CO₂ emissions comparing alternate dam structure scenarios of earthen and rock-fill dam structures. This high deviation represents an important potential for CO₂ emission reduction considering the high volume of the emission in large dam projects.

The life cycle emission assessment of the alternate dam structures, proposed in this research as a novel complementary factor, can be used in the decision-making process of dam projects. The results in this research identify high potential sustainability improvement of dam projects as a result of the proposed method.

Large dams have played a key role in the economic development of a country. They serve a variety of purposes, including electricity generation, flood control and irrigation. Nevertheless, development-induced forced migration of human population for the construction of Tehri Dam in Old Tehri of Garhwal–Himalayan region of Uttarakhand has invited lot of controversy in the recent past. A new city has been designed and presented by the government as a solution for the new settlement of migrated people. A large dam has enormous consequences for people's lives and livelihoods. Tehri Dam transforms landscapes of the region greatly, creates risks of irreversible impacts including controversial issues such as displacement and resettlement and also alters the natural functioning of the entire ecosystem. As a consequence of ecological disruption, a large number of human populations lost their migratory routes and considered as ecological refugees in their new habitat. The present study aims to understand how the forced migration has changed people's daily lives in social, cultural, religious and economic aspects. People's perceptions were discerned through participatory discussions. The field work has been carried out through direct communion with the villagers to explore how the government has reacted to the voices of the resettled citizens and how the development process has affected traditional livelihoods of the rural communities.

At the beginning of the 20th century, three intertwined ambitions drove federal legislation over wildlife and biodiversity: establishment of multiple-use federal lands, the economic development of natural resources, and the maintenance of option values. We examine this federal intervention in natural resource use by analyzing roll call votes over the past century with a Random Utility Model (Manski, 1977) and conclude that economics mattered. So did ideology, but not uniformly. After World War II, the pro-environment vote which had been conservative shifted to being liberal. All these votes involved decisions regarding public land that reallocated the returns to users by changing the asset’s physical character or its usage rights. We suggest that long-term consequences affecting current resource allocations arose from disparities between broadly dispersed benefits and locally concentrated socioeconomic and geophysical (spatial) costs. We show that a primary intent of public land management has become to preserve multiple-use option values and identify important factors in computing those option values. We do this by demonstrating how the willingness to forego current benefits for future ones depends on the community’s resource endowments. These endowments are defined not only in terms of users’ current wealth accumulation but also from their expected ability to extract utility from natural resources over time.

To improve the efficiency, accuracy and adaptivity of the parameter inversion analysis method of a rockfill dam, this study aims to establish an adaptive model based on a harmony search algorithm (HS) and a mixed multi-output relevance vector machine (MMRVM).

By introducing the mixed kernel function, the MMRVM can accurately simulate the nonlinear relationship between the material parameters and dam settlement. Therefore, the finite element method with time consumption can be replaced by the MMRVM. Because of its excellent global search capability, the HS is used to optimize the kernel parameters of the MMRVM and the material parameters of a rockfill dam.

Because the parameters of the HS and the variation range of the MMRVM parameters are relatively fixed, the HS-MMRVM can imbue the inversion analysis with adaptivity; the number of observation points required and the robustness of the HS-MMRVM are analyzed. An application example involving a concrete-faced rockfill dam shows that the HS-MMRVM exhibits high accuracy and high speed in the parameter inversion analysis of static and creep constitutive models.

The applicability of the HS-MMRVM in hydraulic engineering is proved in this paper, which should further validate in inversion problems of other fields.

An adaptive inversion analysis model is established to avoid the parameters of traditional methods that need to be set by humans, which strongly affect the inversion analysis results. By introducing the mixed kernel function, the MMRVM can accurately simulate the nonlinear relationship between the material parameters and dam settlement. To reduce the data dimensions and verify the model’s robustness, the number of observation points required for inversion analysis and the acceptable degree of noise are determined. The confidence interval is built to monitor dam settlement and provide the foundation for dam monitoring and reservoir operation management.

The purpose of this study is to develop and verify a methodology for a zoned deformation prediction model for super high arch dams, which is indeed a panel data-based regression model with the hierarchical clustering on principal components.

The hierarchical clustering method is used to highlight the main features of the time series. This method is used to select the typical points of the measured ambient and concrete temperatures as predictors and divide the deformation observation points into groups. Based on this, the panel data of each zone can be established, and its type can be judged using F and Hausman tests successively. Then hydrostatic–temperature–time–season models for zones can be constructed. Through the comparative analyses of the distributions and the fitted coefficients of these zones, the spatial deformation mechanism of a dam can be identified. A super high arch dam is taken as a case study.

According to the measured radial displacements during the initial operation period, the investigated pendulums are divided into four zones. After tests, fixed-effect regression models are established. The comparative analyses show that the dam deformation conforms to the natural condition. The factors such as the unstable temperature field and the nonlinear time-dependent effect have obvious effects on the dam deformation. The results show the efficiency of the proposed methodology in zoning and prediction modeling for deformation of super high arch dams and the potential to mining dam deformation mechanism.

A zoned deformation prediction model for super high arch dams is proposed where hierarchical clustering on principal component method and panel data model are combined.

This study is an attempt to estimate the influence of the presence of cavities on the stability of slopes in earth dams under rapid drawdown conditions. The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of different factors, such as the diameter and location of cavities, in addition to their existence effects.

A series of finite element simulation models were developed using PLAXIS 2D finite element software to analyse the stability of slopes in earth dams while considering various effects from cavities in the subsoil under rapid drawdown conditions.

The results indicated that the presence of cavities and an increase in the diameter of cavities decreased the stability of the upstream face dramatically for all examined locations in a horizontal direction; however, this effect was less on the downstream side. The results also showed that variations in the location of cavities in the horizontal direction have a greater effect on the stability than those in the vertical direction. The results revealed that increasing shear strength parameters of embankment does not reduce the influence of cavities on stability when those cavities are in critical locations.

A numerical model has been developed to simulate the effects of cavities on the stability of slopes in water-retaining structures/earth dams. The stability of earth dam slopes on upstream and downstream sides under rapid drawdown conditions considering various cavity effects, including their existence, diameter and location, were numerically analysed.

The meshfree node-based smoothed point interpolation method (NS-PIM) is extended to the forward and inversion analysis of a high gravelly soil core rock-fill dam during construction periods.

As one member of the meshfree methods, the NS-PIM has the advantages of “softer” stiffness and adaptability to large deformations which is quite indispensable for the stability analysis of rock-fill dams. In this work, the present method contains a reconstruction procedure to deal with the existence or nonexistence of the construction layers. After verifying the validity of the NS-PIM method for nonlinear elastic model during construction period, the convergence features of the NS-PIM and FEM methods are further investigated with different mesh schemes. Furthermore, the NS-PIM and FEM methods are applied for the forward analysis of a high gravelly soil core rock-fill dam and the convergence features under complex stress conditions are also studied using the rock-fill dam model. Finally, the NS-PIM method is used to calculate the Duncan–Chang parameters of the deep overburden under the high gravelly soil core rock-fill dam based on the back-propagation neural network method.

The results show that: the NS-PIM solution for construction analysis still possesses the property of upper bound solution even under complex stress conditions and can provide comparatively more conservative results for safety evaluation. Furthermore, it can be used to evaluate the accuracy of results and mesh quality together with the FEM solution which has the property of lower bound solution; the inversion analysis in this work provides a set of material parameters for the deep overburden under high rock-fill dam during construction period and the calculated results show good agreement with the measured displacement values and it is feasible to apply the NS-PIM to the forward and inversion analysis of high rock-fill dams on deep overburden during construction periods.

In further study, the feasibility of three-dimensional problems, elastic–plastic problems, contact problems and multipoint inversion can still be probed in the NS-PIM solution for the forward and inversion analysis of high rock-fill dams on deep overburden.

This paper introduced a method for the forward and inversion analysis of high rock-fill dams during construction period using the NS-PIM solution. The property of upper bound solution ensures that the NS-PIM can provide more conservative results for safety evaluation. The inversion analysis in this work provides a set of material parameters for the deep overburden under high rock-fill dam during construction periods.

First, the analysis from forward to inversion for high rock-fill dams during construction period using the NS-PIM solution is accomplished in this work. A procedure dealing with the existence or nonexistence of the construction layers is also developed for the construction analysis. Second, it is confirmed in this work that the NS-PIM still possesses the property of upper bound solution even under complex stress conditions (the forward analysis of high rock-fill dams during construction period). Thus, more conservative results can be provided for safety evaluation. Furthermore, it can be used to evaluate the accuracy of results and mesh quality together with the FEM solution which has the property of lower bound solution. Third, the calculated material parameters of the deep overburden in this work can be used for further studies of the high rock-fill dam.

The purpose of this study is to develop a stochastic finite element method (FEM) to solve the calculation precision deficiency caused by spatial variability of dam compaction quality.

The Choleski decomposition method was applied to generate constraint random field of porosity. Large-scale laboratory triaxial tests were conducted to determine the quantitative relationship between the dam compaction quality and Duncan–Chang constitutive model parameters. Based on this developed relationship, the constraint random fields of the mechanical parameters were generated. The stochastic FEM could be conducted.

When the fully random field was simulated without the restriction effect of experimental data on test pits, the spatial variabilities of both displacement and stress results were all overestimated; however, when the stochastic FEM was performed disregarding the correlation between mechanical parameters, the variabilities of vertical displacement and stress results were underestimated and variation pattern for horizontal displacement also changed. In addition, the method could produce results that are closer to the actual situation.

Although only concrete-faced rockfill dam was tested in the numerical examples, the proposed method is applicable for arbitrary types of rockfill dams.

The value of this study is that the proposed method allowed for the spatial variability of constitutive model parameters and that the applicability was confirmed by the actual project.

This paper aims to study dams on transboundary rivers. In this study, the case of the Nu–Salween–Thanlwin River is reviewed. This study is an attempt toward developing a conceptual model to explain the unequal hydropower exchange of hydropower dams on transboundary rivers.

This paper reviews big dam project plans on the Salween–Thanlwin River near the Myanmar–Thailand border from the perspective of critical hydropolitics. The evidence is drawn from an extensive review of academic literature, reports, newspapers and websites on this topic. Cascao and Zeitoun’s (2010) four pillars of power, namely, geographical, material, bargaining and ideational power, are reviewed in the case of the Salween–Thanlwin River and its riparian states.

On the basis of a realist discourse, power relationships between dams and their socio-environmental effects are discussed from the perspective of critical hydropolitics. Multiple levels of power asymmetry regarding geographical, material, bargaining and ideational power are observed. The powerful states are high electricity consumers and importers. They invest in hydroelectric dams of adjacent developing states and buy back most of the electricity generated to fuel their industrialization and urbanization. Weak states generally do not have high bargaining power. They depend on the investment of high material power states for domestic and economic development and gain from the export of electricity. However, the externalities of hydropower dams are transferred to these weak states. This contributes to an unequal hydropower exchange model.

The model provides an analytical framework for hydropower dam projects through which comprehensive and multidimensional views are extracted. Academia, policymakers, private developers, international development agencies and nongovernment organizations will have a better understanding of hydropower dam projects and the interactions among riparian states.

This conceptual model stems from Cascao and Zeitoun’s (2010) four pillars of power – geographical, material, bargaining and ideational power. The author limits the framework to hydroelectric dams in transboundary rivers. The powerful states are high electricity consumers and importers that dominate the dam development projects and exchange process.