Events Integrating regulatory, institutional and financial elements to design a decision support tool for dam safety management globally  

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020, 11 AM MIT Campus, E51-275, 70 Memorial Drive RSVP Here Organizer: J-WAFS

This talk is the third in a seminar series on water accounting and decision support tools for water management by J-WAFS visiting scholar Dr Joanne Tingey-Holyoak  CPAg, CPA, PhD, BBus (Hons 1A), a senior lecturer and researcher in the Sustainable Engineering, Accounting and Law Group in the University of Southern Australia (UniSA) Business School.  In it, Dr. Tingey-Holyoak will detail the development of a tool that integrates the key legal, institutional, technical and financial elements, as well as other options that should be considered when designing a regulatory environment for the security and safety of water storage.

Ensuring the safety of dams is central to ensuring that they do not present unacceptable risks to downstream communities and surrounding environments. However, it is also essential to ensuring the ongoing security of water for productive uses that sustain economic development. Issues of dam safety are becoming increasing important as infrastructure around the globe ages, population ages, and demographics shift. While the type of legal system will define how any regulatory environment can be implemented, the size of a country’s portfolio of dams, their geometric dimensions, along with their hazard potential and vulnerability will guide the main features of a suitable regulatory regime. This is further complicated by the issues of available funding and optimal financing arrangements for dam safety policies. In this talk, Dr. Tingey-Holyoak will apply regulatory mix theory to assess the institutional and financial considerations along this continuum using data from 51 in-depth country case studies. She will demonstrate how enabling development of a spectrum of options for varying circumstances can allow the systematic development of regulations that ensure the safety of dams and downstream communities.

Please RSVP here