India will host a two days International Conference on dam safety at Kovalam, Thiruvananthapuram on 23rd and 24th January 2018.
- This conference will be jointly inaugurated by Union Minister of State for Water Resources Arjun Ram Meghwal and Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
- The International Dam Safety Conference-2018 is being organized jointly by the Central Water Commission (CWC), Kerala Water Resources Department (KWRD), Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB), National Institute of Technology, Calicut (NITC), and College of Engineering, Trivandrum (CET).
- This is the fourth edition of the conference, being organized under the aegis of ongoing Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project (DRIP).
- The Central Water Commission (CWC) is managing DRIP with the financial assistance from the World Bank to rehabilitate about 225 dams in India.
Key Facts
- Dam safety conferences are held annually under the Dam Safety Rehabilitation and Improvement Project (DRIP) being run by the Water Resource Ministry in seven including Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand.
- It was launched in the year 2012 with a financial outlay of Rs 2,100 crores. The project aims at the rehabilitation of old dams which are in dire need of repair for ensuring their structural safety and operational efficiency.
- The earlier conferences were organized in the years 2015, 2016 and 2017.
- These conferences bring together dam professionals and experts from all over the world to discuss, reflect and share technology and experience in addressing dam safety issues and strategies to address them.
- The conference will see the participation of 550 delegates from over 20 countries
- The Conference will have one Plenary Session, four Technical Sessions, and one Industry Session. There will be three stimulating presentations during the Plenary Session by eminent dam safety professionals.
- Technical Sessions are organized in parallel to provide enhanced opportunities for oral presentation of papers.
- Some of the key issues that will be discussed in the conference are challenges in the dam safety management, overview of the centrally funded Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project and initiatives of the World Bank.
- In order to document authentic asset and health information pertaining to the large dams in the country, a software programme DHARMA will be launched.
- DHARMA (Dam Health and Rehabilitation Monitoring Application) is a web tool that will help dam owners to digitise all dam-related data effectively, store, monitor and take appropriate actions to ensure need-based rehabilitation.
- With a total storage capacity of about 283 billion cubic meters, globally India ranks third after China and the US in terms of the number of large dams.
- Around 80 per cent of the large dams are more than 25 years old, while 213 others exceed the age of 100 years and their safety considerations do not match with the current design standards and safety norms. Therefore it is necessary to discuss various safety-related issues of large dams.
