Doing A Dam Better


Book Description

This book succinctly describes how a large hydro dam in a poor country with weak capacity was successfully prepared by a truly global development and financial partnership, by turning the natural resource curse on its head and tapping the state of the art to mitigate environmental and social impacts.




Metadata for Content Management


Book Description

Metadata for Content Management helps digital content managers think in terms of organization and a practical application of metadata principles. Author David Diamond (DAM Survival Guide) avoids theoretical and academic discussions, instead providing real-world guidance to those designing or redesigning content management or digital asset management systems. Learn how taxonomy and metadata work within digital systems, and see how they affect policy, collaboration, workflow and user acceptance of digital content management systems.




Dam Survival Guide


Book Description

What Digital Asset Management Industry Pros say about DAM Survival Guide: "If you are investing in DAM books to learn more about the subject, I can recommend this one." - Naresh Sarwan, Senior Editor, DigitalAssetManagementNews.org "After you've read DAM Survival Guide, when you negotiate with a DAM vendor or try to evaluate the value of a system for your business, you won't have many blanks left for a vendor to fill in with marketing babble. It therefore is a book I warmly recommend." - Erik Vlietinck, Principle, IT Enquirer "From newbies to experienced digital asset managers, DAM Survival Guide provides enough information that you can access what you need when you need it." - Marisa Peacock, Journalist, CMS Wire "Digital Asset Management Vendors, Integrators, Analyst and Consultants be warned the DAM Survival Guide is packed full of insights, strategies and common sense guides for making DAM work for the end user. David Diamond, a seasoned DAM professional, shares his knowledge using wit, analogy, metaphor that cleaves the real meat on the bones of complexity that is Digital Asset Management. David nails it on every level: technology, human and insights. I would not hesitate in recommending DAM Survival Guide to anyone on or starting their DAM Journey." - Mark Davey, Founder, DAM Foundation _______________ ABOUT THE BOOK DAM Survival Guide is a digital asset management book that explains everything you need to know to design, plan, deploy, promote and maintain a successful DAM initiative at your organization. Written by a recognized DAM industry export in a friendly, easy-to-follow style, DAM Survival Guide is a must-have resource for those new to DAM, and it's great for those looking to increase their DAM knowledge too. DAM Survival Guide is everything you need to know about DAM in one book. Starting with an overview of what digital asset management is and isn't (including a section on why you might not need DAM at all), the book goes on to offer a detailed discussion of everything that's important for you to know before you get too far with your DAM planning: Learn the benefits of wrapping DAM into a corporate initiate you can better manage Know how to find and recruit others at your organization who can become great allies See how you can benefit from reliable professional help (cheap or even free!), so you can avoiding expensive time-wasters Fully understand the needs of your organization, so that you can exceed expectations Start thinking about DAM software at the right time, so you can avoid costly purchase mistakes Discover tricks to determine which DAM vendors are most favored by customers, most progressive, and most likely to stay in business Explore elements of human psychology that can help you overcome change-resistance and increase buy-in Including approximately 56,000 words, this book, first published in June, 2012, is packed with useful information the author, David Diamond, has acquired during his 12+ years as a professional in the Digital Asset Management industry. Note: The Digital Asset Management Survival Guide mentions no DAM software solutions or vendors by name. The book's contents are unbiased and applicable no matter which DAM solution you determine to be right for you."




Dams and Development


Book Description

By the year 2000, the world had built more than 45,000 large dams to irrigate crops, generate power, control floods in wet times and store water in dry times. Yet, in the last century, large dams also disrupted the ecology of half the world's rivers, displaced tens of millions of people from their homes and left nations burdened with debt. Their impacts have inevitably generated growing controversy and conflicts. Resolving their role in meeting water and energy needs is vital for the future and illustrates the complex development challenges that face our societies. The Report of the World Commission on Dams: - is the product of an unprecedented global public policy effort to bring governments, the private sector and civil society together in one process - provides the first comprehensive global and independent review of the performance and impacts of dams - presents a new framework for water and energy resources development - develops an agenda of seven strategic priorities with corresponding criteria and guidelines for future decision-making. Challenging our assumptions, the Commission sets before us the hard, rigorous and clear-eyed evidence of exactly why nations decide to build dams and how dams can affect human, plant and animal life, for better or for worse. Dams and Development: A New Framework for Decision-Making is vital reading on the future of dams as well as the changing development context where new voices, choices and options leave little room for a business-as-usual scenario.




Dam Nation


Book Description

In the scramble to claim water rights in the West during the fevered days of early emigration and expansion, running out of water was rarely a concern, and the dam building fever that transformed the West in the 19th and 20th centuries created a map of the region that may be unsustainable. Throughout the arid American West, metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Denver need water. These cities are growing, but water supplies are dwindling. Scientists agree that the West is heating up and drying out, leading to future water shortages that will pose a challenge to existing laws. Dam Nation looks first to the past, to the stories of the California gold rush and the earliest attempts by men to shape the landscape and tame it, takes us to the “Great American Desert” and the settlement of the west under the theory that "rain follows the plow," and then takes on the ongoing legal and moral battles in the West. Author Stephen Grace, is a novelist, a storyteller, and the author of several non-fiction books on Colorado. He weaves the facts into a compelling narrative that informs, entertains, and tells an important story.




Tailings Dam Management for the Twenty-First Century


Book Description

This book presents a comprehensive approach to address the need to improve the design of tailings dams, their management and the regulation of tailings management facilities to reduce, and eventually eliminate, the risk of such facilities failing. The scope of the challenge is well documented in the report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and GRID Arendal entitled “Mine Tailings Storage: Safety Is No Accident,” which was released in October 2017. The report recommends that “Regulators, industry and communities should adopt a shared, zero-failure objective to tailings storage facilities...” and identifies several areas where further improvements are required. In this context, the application of cutting-edge risk-assessment methodologies and risk-management practices can contribute to a significant reduction and eventual elimination of dam failures through Risk Informed Decision Making. As such, the book focuses on identifying and describing the risk-assessment approaches and risk-management practices that need to be implemented in order to develop a way forward to achieve socially acceptable levels of tailings dam risk.




Riverine Ecosystem Management


Book Description

This open access book surveys the frontier of scientific river research and provides examples to guide management towards a sustainable future of riverine ecosystems. Principal structures and functions of the biogeosphere of rivers are explained; key threats are identified, and effective solutions for restoration and mitigation are provided. Rivers are among the most threatened ecosystems of the world. They increasingly suffer from pollution, water abstraction, river channelisation and damming. Fundamental knowledge of ecosystem structure and function is necessary to understand how human acitivities interfere with natural processes and which interventions are feasible to rectify this. Modern water legislation strives for sustainable water resource management and protection of important habitats and species. However, decision makers would benefit from more profound understanding of ecosystem degradation processes and of innovative methodologies and tools for efficient mitigation and restoration. The book provides best-practice examples of sustainable river management from on-site studies, European-wide analyses and case studies from other parts of the world. This book will be of interest to researchers in the field of aquatic ecology, river system functioning, conservation and restoration, to postgraduate students, to institutions involved in water management, and to water related industries.




Dam and Levee Safety and Community Resilience


Book Description

Although advances in engineering can reduce the risk of dam and levee failure, some failures will still occur. Such events cause impacts on social and physical infrastructure that extend far beyond the flood zone. Broadening dam and levee safety programs to consider community- and regional-level priorities in decision making can help reduce the risk of, and increase community resilience to, potential dam and levee failures. Collaboration between dam and levee safety professionals at all levels, persons and property owners at direct risk, members of the wider economy, and the social and environmental networks in a community would allow all stakeholders to understand risks, shared needs, and opportunities, and make more informed decisions related to dam and levee infrastructure and community resilience. Dam and Levee Safety and Community Resilience: A Vision for Future Practice explains that fundamental shifts in safety culture will be necessary to integrate the concepts of resilience into dam and levee safety programs.




Cadillac Desert


Book Description

“I’ve been thinking a lot about Cadillac Desert in the past few weeks, as the rain fell and fell and kept falling over California, much of which, despite the pouring heavens, seems likely to remain in the grip of a severe drought. Reisner anticipated this moment. He worried that the West’s success with irrigation could be a mirage — that it took water for granted and didn’t appreciate the precariousness of our capacity to control it.” – Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times, January 20,2023 "The definitive work on the West's water crisis." --Newsweek The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster. In his landmark book, Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West. Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden--an Eden that may only be a mirage. This edition includes a new postscript by Lawrie Mott, a former staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, that updates Western water issues over the last two decades, including the long-term impact of climate change and how the region can prepare for the future.




Contested Knowledges


Book Description

Water acquisition, storage, allocation and distribution are intensely contested in our society, whether, for instance, such issues pertain to a conflict between upstream and downstream farmers located on a small stream or to a large dam located on the border of two nations. Water conflicts are mostly studied as disputes around access to water resources or the formulation of water laws and governance rules. However, explicitly or not, water conflicts nearly always also involve disputes among different philosophical views. The contributions to this edited volume have looked at the politics of contested knowledge as manifested in the conceptualisation, design, development, implementation and governance of large dams and mega-hydraulic infrastructure projects in various parts of the world. The special issue has explored the following core questions: Which philosophies and claims on mega-hydraulic projects are encountered, and how are they shaped, validated, negotiated and contested in concrete contexts? Whose knowledge counts and whose knowledge is downplayed in water development conflict situations, and how have different epistemic communities and cultural-political identities shaped practices of design, planning and construction of dams and mega-hydraulic projects? The contributions have also scrutinised how these epistemic communities interactively shape norms, rules, beliefs and values about water problems and solutions, including notions of justice, citizenship and progress that are subsequently to become embedded in material artefacts.