Originally published here by the Network for Engineering With Nature.
Dams across the United States are aging, with the cost to repair or remove all known deficient non-federal dams estimated at over $1.5 billion. Even for functioning dams, there may still be a number of reasons to remove them, from emissions reduction to flood risk mitigation to wildlife benefits. However, the decision to remove a dam is fraught with competing objectives– that’s where this project comes in.
Earlier this year, University of Georgia Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems (UGA IRIS) alum Laura Naslund successfully defended her doctoral dissertation: Impacts of dams and their removal on carbon emissions and storage. Six months later, the tool she created to help stakeholders make decisions on dam removal is officially available online, with a paper to match.
Authored by a team including Naslund, UGA IRIS alumni and affiliates Dan Buhr, Matt Chambers, Brian Bledsoe, Amy Rosemond and Seth Wenger, as well as USACE ecologists Kyle McKay and Suman Jumani, the River Research and Applications publication explores dam removal objectives, metrics for each objective’s outcomes, and the potential to use their web tool to make infrastructure decisions in both the near- and long-term.
“We pretty quickly found that lots of tools support a couple of objectives, like supporting fish or generating power,” Naslund explained back in April 2024, “but a lot of the common considerations of dam removal, like safety hazards and recreation and historic preservation, were not included in existing decision support tools.” The tool is now available right here on the Network for Engineering With Nature (N-EWN) site for decision makers to evaluate up to 18 different priorities, from transportation to biodiversity.
The web application is free and easy to use. The 18 objectives are grouped into five categories: accounting for monetary costs and feasibility, meeting infrastructure service demands, reducing safety hazards, meeting community recreation desires, and maintaining and restoring the physical, chemical and biological integrity of navigable waters. Users can select multiple objectives, select the ‘view metrics and methods’ button, and explore a customized list of references to help in making infrastructure decisions.
“This tool embraces the mission of the Network for Engineering With Nature by facilitating infrastructure decision processes that align social, environmental and engineering benefits at the end of the infrastructure lifecycle,” Naslund said of the application. Check out the web tool here, and read the accompanying paper here.
Want to learn more about this work? Read about Laura’s grad school journey in our post from earlier this year!