The Congress of the International Commission on Large Dams" was held in Marseille (France) from Monday 30 May to Friday 3 June 2022 with over 1400 participants. 

ICOLD includes 104 members countries and 28 Technical Committees working on current technical issues related to water resource development and management.

The presence of more than 200 young engineers and more than 200 exhibitors shows the enthusiasm of the profession after two years of restrictions caused by COVID19.

In this congress four questions were discussed. Among these, Question 107 was dedicated to Dams and Climate Change Interesting papers explore impacts of climatic change on existing dams and reservoirs and remedies or on needs of dams and reservoirs and levees (water storage, floods mitigation, oceans raising). Other papers explain the favourable impacts of dams on the climatic change. The evaluation of greenhouse gases emissions by reservoirs and dams construction was also addressed.

Another interesting question, Q106, was devoted to "Surveillance, Instrumentation, Monitoring and Data Acquisition and Processing”. New technologies in instrumentation and monitoring were introduced. Data acquisition and large data processing to evaluate the behavior of dams were highlighted: case studies and new methods including artificial intelligence were discussed.

Anton Schleiss presented the outcomes of the HYDROPOWER EUROPE and its two main deliverables: the Research and Innovation Agenda and the Strategic Industry Roadmap.

 
Prof. Anton Schleiss presenting the outcomes of the HYDROPOWER EUROPE project during the General Assembly of ICOLD
 

7 technical visits and two post-congress tours enabled the visit of hydroelectric plants operated by EDF and CNR in France, ENEL, CVA and Edison in Italy.

The visit of Place Moulin dam operated by CVA (Italy) during post-congress tour

The CFBR symposium
 

A symposium was organised just before the congress on a subject of interest to the future of the profession: « Sharing water: multi-purpose of reservoirs and innovations ». It was split on four themes:

·       Theme 1: Territorial and water multi-purpose issues 

·       Theme 2: Governance and funding 

·       Theme 3: Innovative solutions in reservoirs uses 

·       Theme 4: Operating multipurpose facilities 

A round table exploring the future needs of reservoirs closed this symposium: “dams and reservoirs: the challenges for tomorrow”. A good introduction was presented by Thierry Caquet (INRAE, symposium SHARING WATER Marseille 2022). He mentioned that today 1.9 bil. people live in potential severely water scarce areas and by 2050 with increasing climate change impacts around 4 billions of people will live under water stress (Burek et al., 2016). 

We invite you to visit the website of the French Committee on Dams and Reservoirs, if you want to have access to the papers and presentations through the link: Marseille_symposium (barrages-cfbr.eu)

Dams and art

Finally, Patrick le Delliou from the French Committee CFBR invites you to see a movie illustrating how dams can be integrated in our culture with the use of dam cladding as a support for artistic work (painted frescoes, projection...). The link below allows you to see and download this movie in HD format (513 MB).

Marseille_vidéo (barrages-cfbr.eu)