Achievement

IGERT SmartDam trainees Kerri Stone and Minal Parekh researched the relationship between public policy and the potential implementation of intelligent and continuous performance monitoring of dams and levees. They researched current dam and levee safety monitoring, agency coordination and policy, and risk management and concluded that current monitoring and management of dams and levees is disjointed and limited in capabilities for detecting early signs of catastrophic failure. The trainees argue that applying technological advancement to develop tools to improve monitoring practice not only can reduce risk of failure, but also can drive institutional innovation toward agency cooperation. Policies that adopt continuous and intelligent monitoring of dams and levees can provide a link for a cooperative vision for preventative engineering. They wrote a paper about their findings and presented it to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials at the 2010 ASDSO dam safety conference.