Events, College of Engineering

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Browsing Events, College of Engineering by Department "Center for Geotechnical Practice and Research"

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    2021 Schnabel Engineering Lecture: Performance of the Federal Flood Control Systems from 2010-2020
    Snorteland, Nathan (Virginia Tech, 2021-10-26)
    The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is responsible for flood risk management across the United States. The agency has more than 740 dams and is responsible for more than 15,000 miles of levees. Since 2008, USACE projects have prevented more than $1.2 Trillion in damages from flooding. Although some of this came as a result of dozens of smaller floods, much of that protection came during three events within the last ten years. From 2010 through 2020, the U.S. has had three major inland floods and two coastal events where federal flood protection exists: in 2010 on the Cumberland River, in 2011 on the Missouri, Ohio, White, and Mississippi Rivers, in 2015 on several rivers in Texas and Oklahoma, and in 2017 along the Gulf Coast of the U.S. and its territories in the Caribbean. For many of these locations, these events produced record rainfall and the flood of record. Although the large facilities overall performed as expected, USACE also experienced some operational issues, did a substantial amount of flood fighting, had several incidents, and several failures. We will talk about how dam and levee engineering has changed over the past 20 years by focusing on how increased flooding has affected our approach to flood risk management. We will also discuss how we have changed standard design approaches to accommodate this new approach.
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    2023 Schnabel Engineering Lecture: History of Dam and Levee Safety in the United States
    Paul, David (Virginia Tech, 2023-10-24)
    Since the failure of Teton Dam in June 1976 that led to the enactment of dam safety legislation, the United States dam engineering profession has established a robust and active dam safety program to monitor the approximate 90,500 dams registered in the National Inventory of Dams (NID) maintained by the USACE. Efforts are underway by the USACE to establish a national levee safety program to monitor the approximate 150,000 miles of levees in the United States. Risk Informed Decision Making (RIDM) was implemented about 25 years ago at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR). As it has evolved over time in the dam/levee engineering world, it has produced positive impacts on these programs and focused continued safe operation of this critical infrastructure sector. The presentation will review the history of these programs and the evolution into risk-based dam assessments and new technology that are being used in current practice and will explore what is possible in the future. This management of critical infrastructure will continue to evolve for dams and levees as well as other civil engineering infrastructure, thus impacting your future careers.
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    From Hokie to CEO, Sharing a Few Experiences and Lessons from the Journey
    Rabe, Walter (Virginia Tech, 2020-11-09)
    Schnabel Engineering is pleased to bring you our Chief Executive Officer, Walter Rabe, PE. as our fifteenth lecture of this series. Following completion of his Masters of Science in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech, he gained field geotechnical and construction management experiences with Bechtel before joining Schnabel 20 years ago. Throughout his career he has worked on major commercial and infrastructure and government facilities around the world.