USU engineering professor elected to board of national group

Utah State University engineering professor David S. Bowles has been elected to serve a second term on the U.S. Society on Dams board of directors.

USSD has more than 1,000 members who work in a wide range of areas related to dams throughout the United States. It is a professional organization for individuals and organizations responsible for the construction, operation and maintenance of dams. USSD members include private consultants, government dam owners and regulators, construction firms and suppliers of products. The organization represents the United States on the International Commission on Large Dams, which has a membership of approximately 90 countries.

Bowles is an expert in dam safety and is concerned with keeping existing dams safe so that the public, property and environment are not exposed to risk of dam failure floods. He is currently leading a working group from six countries, which is revising the ICOLD guideline on dam safety in a safety and risk management framework.

“Dams are an important type of infrastructure used for water resources management,” said Bowles. “They form reservoirs that provide water for all kinds of uses, protect people and property from devastating floods, provide hydropower as a clean source of energy and provide recreation opportunities. Today there are also concerns to reduce the environmental impacts of dams.”

The USSD is governed by a 12-member board of directors. Directors are elected by the individual members of the USSD to serve a three-year term. Bowles said it is an honor to be elected to serve ones professional colleagues in this way.

Bowles has worked at USU since 1976, shortly after the failure of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Teton Dam in Idaho. At that time, U.S. President Jimmy Carter issued an executive order requiring federal government agencies with responsibilities for dam safety to explore the use of risk assessment in the field of dam safety. In response to this opportunity, Bowles collaborated with USU colleagues Loren Anderson, Ron Canfield and Terry Glover to develop an interdisciplinary research program in dam safety risk assessment and management.

USU is internationally recognized as a leader in water research because of the strong faculty at USU, past and present. Water has been an important issue for the state of Utah since its founding because of its dry climate, said Bowles. The state of Utah has funded the Utah Water Research Laboratory at USU because of the importance of water to the state and because of the productive faculty who have contributed to solving water-related problems for the state, region, nation and world.

“USU and the Utah Water Research Lab are recognized around the world for leadership in the field of dam safety, especially for our work in portfolio risk management for organizations that are responsible for groups of dams,” said Bowles. “We have worked with dam owners, regulators and professional bodies throughout the world to train professionals, demonstrate applications, develop professional guidelines and assist governmental and private organizations to develop dam safety risk management programs, including Reclamation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The result has been improvements in the safety of dams that may not otherwise have taken place. Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, that work is expanding into the field of levee risk management for coastal and riverine settings.”

Bowles currently serves as the director of the Institute for Dam Safety Risk Management. He served as director and associate director and of the UWRL from 1986-1996 and is a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering and at the UWRL.

For more information on USU’s UWRL, visit http://www.engineering.usu.edu/uwrl/. For more information on USU’s College of Engineering, visit http://www.engineering.usu.edu/. For more information on USSD, visit http://www.ussdams.org/.