Announcements

April 29, 2020 - Updates for Members

ICOLD 2021 Call for Abstracts Deadline Reminder

ICOLD 2021 Call for Abstracts Deadline Reminder

ICOLD holds a Congress every three years with a focus on four technical questions that address international issues. The attendance is typically 1,000 to 1,500 participants from 60 to 70 countries.

As the Canadian national committee, the Canadian Dam Association (CDA), submits papers to ICOLD for consideration in the program. Selected papers will be published in Transactions of the Congress, along with a General Report summarizing the state of practice. This publication becomes the leading international reference on the topic. Invited authors will make presentations at the Congress. 

The next ICOLD Congress will be held in Marseille, France from June 4 to 11, 2021. The questions to be addressed during the Congress were determined during the 2019 Annual Meeting held in Ottawa. Canadians are invited to share our knowledge and fully participate to this international event.

The schedule for submission of papers for the ICOLD 2021 Congress is :

May 25, 2020 – Abstracts are submitted to CDA;
June 8, 2020 – Authors are notified of acceptance;
August 17, 2020 – Draft papers are submitted to CDA for review;
September 21, 2020 – Final papers are submitted to CDA.

QUESTIONS  FOR THE 27th ICOLD WORLD CONGRESS, MARSEILLE, JUNE 2021

104 - CONCRETE DAM DESIGN INNOVATION AND PERFORMANCE 
a/ Innovations for arch dam analysis, design and construction; including RCC arch and arch-gravity dams.
b/ Innovations for design, construction materials and placement methods, flood management during construction and performance of concrete dams, including RCC and cemented material dams.
c/ Innovations for raising existing concrete dams.
d/ Innovations for extremely high concrete dams.
e/ Operational performance of concrete dams during the life cycle, including under extreme conditions.

105 - INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS CONCERNING DAMS
a/ Recent lessons from incidents and accidents concerning dams during the life cycle, including during construction.
b/ Evaluation of the flows and flood, estimation and quantification of the consequences, including social, economic and environmental aspects, in case of failure or incidents
c/ Emergency planning: regulation, organisation, information of the population and examples of implementation.
d/ Governance of the safety: definition of the responsibilities, periodic reviews, implementation tests, organisation of lessons learned implementation.

106 - SURVEILLANCE, INSTRUMENTATION, MONITORING AND DATA ACQUISITION
a/ Long term performance of existing surveillance systems including reliability and accuracy; importance of visual inspections.
b/ New technologies in dam and foundation instrumentation and monitoring.
c/ Data acquisition and processing to evaluate the behavior of dams, predict and identify incidents.
d/ Understanding and handling of large quantity of data, including artificial intelligence approach.

107 - DAMS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
a/ Impacts of climatic change on existing dams and reservoirs and remedies; case studies and costs.
b/ Impacts of climatic change on needs and designs of dams, reservoirs and levees (water storage, floods mitigation, oceans raising…).
c/ Favourable impacts of dams on climatic change, including greenhouse gases reduction by optimisation of hydroelectric production. Needs, potential and cost of energy pumped storage.
d/ Unfavourable impacts of dams and reservoirs on climatic change: evaluation of greenhouse gases emissions by reservoirs and dam construction.

How to submit an abstract for the CONGRESS
Please follow the instructions below:

  1. Title in English AND in French: Make the title of the abstract brief, clearly indicating the nature of the proposed subject.
  2. Names of the authors: Submit the full given name(s) and the family name. Do not include degrees or professional titles.
  3. Abstracts can be in English or French and should be no longer than 200 words.
  4. Please send the abstract to Congress2021Abstracts@cda.ca.

Questions?
Should you have any questions about submitting an abstract for the 2021 Congress, please contact CDA’s Director-at-Large for ICOLD, Michel Tremblay, at director-at-large.icold@cda.ca.