A dam break analysis workshop will be hosted by SANCOLD in collaboration with the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Pretoria. The Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC) recently published a new training document called “Using HEC-RAS for Dam Break Studies”. It covers topics like:

• ·        Which routing technique to use to route flows through your reservoir;
• ·        Estimating dam breach characteristics, including some of the newer erosion process models; and
• ·        Downstream flood routing/modeling issues. 

This, as well as other interesting issues regarding dam break analysis will be discussed.

The main presenters will be:

• ·        Mr Chris Goodell who is a senior hydraulic engineer with WEST Consultants and manages the Portland, Oregon office (USA). He worked at the HEC actively working on the development of HEC-RAS as well as being a contributing author to the HEC-RAS manuals and has applied HEC-RAS to a wide range of complex problems especially modelling of dam breaches.
• ·     Mr Scherrit Knoesen is a dam engineer specialising in river hydraulics aspects thereof and especially dam break analysis. He has been at the Department of Water and Sanitation for 33 years where he developed expertise in high level dam break analysis and flood line rendering of numerous dams as well as dam-systems dam break analysis. At present he is contracted to Babereki Consultants doing dam break analyses for EPP compilations at 25 Departmental dams.

• ·       Mr Louis Hattingh is a dam safety specialist with extensive dam break analysis experience as well as the hydraulic modelling of a number of the major rivers in South Africa for water resources purposes. His experience includes performing or evaluating the dam break analysis for more than 110 major dams in South Africa.