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Concerted action on dambreak modelling

Objective



Flooding following the breaching of a dam is an important risk for many isolated communities and centres of population in Europe. Fortunately such catastrophic events are rare but the unexpected nature of the event can add to the human impact of the disaster. In the past, dam failures worldwide have led to many casualties and huge economic damages. Despite the improvement in construction techniques and safety measures, the increase in the total number of active dams around the world, together with the ageing of existing structures create a permanent threat of bodily and property damage and loss in industrialised, developing and third world countries.

Before reaching the required levels of certainty and accuracy for dam break modelling, a considerable amount of validation work must be done by the research community as well as by the practising engineers. Calibration and comparison of different computing tools as well as critical evaluation of the usefulness of the output produced can only be accomplished by a multinational team of researchers and engineers, both with the aim of work sharing and independent check of the results.

The overall aims of the Concerted Action may be summarised as being:
A1. to exchange information between participants, i.e. universities and industrial companies;

A2. to promote the comparison of numerical dam-break models with analytical, experimental and field data;

A3. to promote the comparison and validation of software packages developed or used by the participants;

A4. to define and promote co-operative research.

The Concerted Action will consist of four meetings over a period of two years. A Steering Group will be responsible for the delivery of the outputs from the Concerted Action.

The main outputs of this Concerted Action will be:

i To establish the needs of industry and create a network of European experts in this field
ii To disseminate findings through:
a The publication of meeting papers
b Publication of guidelines / current best practice for dam-break assessment
iii To create a portfolio of test cases for dam-break software
iv To determine future RTD requirements linked with industry needs

Call for proposal

Data not available

Coordinator

H R Wallingford Group Ltd
Address
Howberry park
OX10 8BA Wallingford
United Kingdom

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EU contribution
€ 0,00

Participants (20)