Papers in this issue
Delegates to the British Dam Society’s biennial conference at Keele University in September 2024 heard the Binnie Lecture given by Alan Brown of Jacobs. His lecture covered a variety of risk-based aspects of reservoir engineering, including how tools for risk assessments were developed, assessing potential failure modes, and risk-informed decision making.
The lecture has now been converted to the first paper in this issue (Brown, 2025), and is recommended reading for all involved in reservoir safety. A risk-informed regulatory regime is proposed, with the key principles of such a regime set out. This is in contrast to the current regime based on engineering standards, which may overlook some failure modes, and may also lead to the inefficient use of funds.
The second paper in this issue (Pardoen and Konrad, 2025) reports on research into the behaviour of different soils at their interfaces. These interfaces often occur on earth embankment dams where there are cores, filters, and, possibly, multiple fill materials. The research investigated the shear strength at the interfaces and the deformation that occurred, including volumetric changes. The interfaces were numerically modelled, which showed a good agreement with the shear test results.
The need for more papers or notes
You will have noticed that this issue is smaller than usual, and only contains two papers. This is due to a lack of suitable papers being submitted for consideration for publication.
Dams and Reservoirs is the peer-reviewed technical journal for the British Dam Society (BDS). It is BDS members who can produce the papers that are the most interesting, informative, and relevant to other BDS members.
Every dam is unique, and many require unique solutions to problems that arise. Sharing experiences of such solutions can be beneficial to the entire dam community, so why not think about preparing a paper? Alternatively, a short note explaining one particular aspect of a complex scheme could be of equal interest.
If you have an interesting project or solution that you would be prepared to share with other BDS members, please do contact the Editor, Andrew Pepper, on atpec@peppernet.org or editor@britishdams.org. He will be able to guide you in what is required and help you with many aspects of the preparation.
Only by receiving a steady stream of papers and articles can Dams and Reservoirs continue to act as a key source of information for dam engineering professionals.
