Tailings Dam Breach Analysis Workshop - Canadian Dam Association (CDA-ACB)

February 4, 2025

2025-02-04 09:00 AM 2025-02-04 06:00 PM Tailings Dam Breach Analysis Workshop N.A. America/New_York

Time: 9h00 – 18h00

Holiday Inn Belo Horizonte Savassi
Rua (Street) Professor Moraes, 600
Belo Horizonte - MG - 30150-370 - Brazil
Room: Espaço Savassi + Sion

Cost: $500 CDN

Workshop Registration

The Tailings Dam Breach Analysis Workshop is based on the Technical Bulletin: Tailings Dam Breach Analysis. The
workshop has the following objectives:

Promote the science of tailings dam breach analyses (TDBA) and build awareness on the risk of tailings dam
failures
Present and promote the use of Technical Bulletin: Tailings Dam Breach Analysis
Provide training to dam safety professionals who undertake such studies for their sites and projects
Share experiences and collect comments from participants to advance the current state of practice for TDBA

The workshop focuses on the issues and challenges that are specific to tailings dams and must be captured in such
studies. The importance of these issues has become more apparent from recent catastrophic tailings dam failures.
The main topics to be covered in the workshop are:

A brief overview of the Bulletin and TDBA process
Terminology
Failure scenarios and modes/mechanisms of tailings dam breach
Geotechnical issues of tailings relevant to TDBA
Rheological behavior of tailings
Challenges to breach modelling and outflow hydrograph/volume estimation
Selection of TDBA modelling cases
Modelling of breach runout processes (hydraulic modeling)
Geo-mechanical models and their limitations
Scope and requirements of sensitivity analysis
Inundation mapping and reporting
Common mistakes and pitfalls
Case studies based on recent failures.

Who should attend?

This workshop will be of particular interest to dam owners and operators of mining facilities, regulators, non-governmental
organizations, emergency planners, risk assessors and the consultants who provide services to the owners. It is helpful if the
participants already have some familiarity with tailings dam operation or management. The workshop is intended to meet requirements for continuing professional development.

Presenters:

Mohammad (Mamun) Al-Mamun

Tetra Tech Canada Inc

Mohammad (Mamun) Al-Mamun is Director and Principal Consultant - Dam Practice, Tetra Tech Canada Inc. He has over twenty years of experience in geotechnical, geoenvironmental, and infrastructure engineering. His areas of expertise include design and construction of embankments dams and waste dumps, dam safety management (water, hydropower, mining), risk assessment, regulatory compliance, tailings management, large scale site investigation, foundation characterizations and instrumentation programs as well as laboratory and in-situ testing, and construction management. Mamun is member of Independent Technical Review Boards (ITRB) and acts as Engineer of Records (EoR) for mining dams.
Mamun is Secretary-Treasurer of the Canadian Dam Association (CDA). He is an active member and an instructor for the CDA, serving on technical committees and working groups. He has organized workshops and conferences for CDA, Tailings and Mine Waste (TMW) and Canadian Geotechnical Society (CGS).

Dr. Shielan Liu, P.Eng.

Klohn Crippen Berger Inc

Shielan Liu is a senior civil/hydrotechnical Engineer and modeller with Klohn Crippen Berger Inc. With over 25 years of international consulting and research experience in diverse dam safety management, natural hazard risk assessment, water management, and mine closure planning projects, Shielan has developed broad expertise in hydrological, hydraulics and geotechnical modelling. She has led and participated in independent-reviews of over 100 water and tailings dam breach studies around the world. She authored and reviewed the corporate guidelines for water and tailings dam breach assessment and failure impact assessment for two major mining companies in recent years. She is a key member of the CDA working group for Tailings Dam Breach Analysis and is an approved TDBA instructor.