British Dam Society Research Articles

Technical visit: Banbury flood alleviation scheme

The British Dam Society was invited to undertake a site visit to the Banbury flood alleviation scheme, organised by committee member and project site supervisor, John Hopkins of Black & Veatch, the scheme’s designers. The visit to the site, located just upstream of the town of Banbury on the River Cherwell, took place on 7 September 2011 with 17 visiting members hosted by the project site team.

Gallimaufry: News and events from the British Dam Society

Gallimaufry: News and events from the British Dam Society

Meeting report: ICOLD 2011, Lucerne, Switzerland

The 79th annual meeting of the International Committee on Large Dams (ICOLD) was held in the Swiss city of Lucerne between 30 May and 3 June 2011. There was a good attendance of British Dam Society (BDS) members at the meetings with a total of ten delegates who represent the UK on a number of the different technical committees. In total there were more than 1000 delegates representing 65 countries.

Gallimaufry: News and events from the British Dam Society

Gallimaufry: News and events from the British Dam Society

Gallimaufry: News and events from the British Dam Society

Gallimaufry: News and events from the British Dam Society

Publications and bibliographies of the British Dam Society

This article provides an introduction to the bibliographies and publications currently available on the British Dam Society (BDS) website and relates historical changes in the nature of publications to the activities of BDS and the dam engineering profession in the UK. Current emphasis on continuing professional development serves as a reminder that the engineer also has a duty to be cognisant of all relevant developments in the diverse subjects relevant to dam engineering. Accomplishing these two tasks can present problems and BDS has endeavoured to help dam engineers by publishing technical papers in its journal and conference proceedings and also by providing bibliographies to improve awareness of, and access to, these publications.

Gallimaufry: News and events from the British Dam Society

Gallimaufry: News and events from the British Dam Society

BDS conference in Glasgow, June 2010

The 16th biennial conference of the British Dam Society (BDS) took place at the University of Strathclyde in the heart of Glasgow city. It was held early this year (2010), taking place in June between Wednesday the 23rd and Saturday the 26th.

Gallimaufry: News and events from the British Dam Society

Gallimaufry: News and events from the British Dam Society

A time to deliver

The British Dam Society had the great pleasure of the company of the ICE president, Paul Jowitt, at the 16th biennial conference during the evening of the 24 June 2010. He gave the conference dinner speech – a call to action for dams engineers, which is reproduced below.

Gallimaufry: News and events from the British Dam Society

Gallimaufry: News and events from the British Dam Society

Scottish canal reservoirs – a historical perspective. Part 3: Caledonian canal

This paper is based on a presentation made to the Institution of Civil Engineers' Panel for Historic Engineering Works and the British Dam Society in Glasgow on 11 March 2009. Earlier parts of this paper discussed the reservoirs supplying the Lowlands and Crinan canals. This part discusses the unusual reservoirs on the Caledonian canal. Inspecting and Supervising Engineers for all the Scottish canal reservoirs are listed.

News and events from the British Dam Society

News and events from the British Dam Society

Scottish canal reservoirs – a historical perspective. Part 2: Crinan canal

This paper is based on a presentation made to the Institution of Civil Engineers' Panel for Historic Engineering Works and the British Dam Society in Glasgow on 11 March 2009. An earlier part of this paper discussed the reservoirs supplying the canals of the Lowlands (Brown D. H. Scottish canal reservoirs – a historical perspective. Part 1: Lowlands. Dams and Reservoirs, 2009, 19, No. 3, 111–118). This part discusses the Crinan canal and will be followed in a future issue by a short paper on the unusual reservoirs on the Caledonian canal.

News and events from the British Dam Society

News and events from the British Dam Society

Tour of UK dams and hydraulic structures

Between 29 April and 2 May 2009 the British Dam Society hosted a tour of English dams and historic hydraulic structures by 43 members of the Association of Friends of the Hubert-Engels Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Applied Hydromechanics at Dresden University of Technology. The authors of this paper accompanied them on their tour.

News and events from the British Dam Society

News and events from the British Dam Society

Scottish canal reservoirs – a historical perspective. Part 1: Lowlands

This paper is based on a presentation made to the Institution of Civil Engineers' Panel for Historic Engineering Works and the British Dam Society in Glasgow on 11 March 2009. This first part of the paper and covers the canals in the Lowlands. The Highland canal reservoirs will be discussed in later issues of Dams and Reservoirs.

News and events from the British Dam Society

Welcome to the second issue of Dams and Reservoirs of 2009. This issue contains articles on a wide range of topics including the paper which was awarded the Bateman Prize 2008 on the Queen Mary and King George V emergency draw down schemes and Hamilton-King and Hope's article on one of the hot topics – changes to reservoir legislation. Mike Chrimes, Head of Knowledge Transfer at ICE, has also provided part 1 of a fascinating historical account of the development of masonry dam design in the British Colonies. Part 2 will follow in the next issue.

Queen Mary reservoir, Surrey, UK

Around 20 members attended the British Dam Society visit to Thames Water's Queen Mary reservoir, Littleton, in Surrey on the fine sunny afternoon of 19 November 2008. The aim of the visit was principally to view a demonstration of the newly installed draw down siphons, but the attendees were also given a viewing of some of the other activities undertaken at the site.