At the occasion of all IAHR council members visiting Nanjing, NHRI invited Prof. Arturo Marcano, IAHR Vice President and Dr. Ramon Gutierrez Serret, IAHR Secretary-General to give lectures at NHRI Frontier Forum of Water Science on the morning of May 16th. The lectures were chaired by Prof. LI Yun, NHRI Vice President and Prof. LU Yongjun, Director of NHRI River Harbor Engineering Department, respectively.
Prof. Marcano made two presentations, titled Hydroelectricity in South America and Dam Safety in SouthAmerica – Outlook. In his presentations, he introduced the current status of hydropower in different countries of South America, including hydropower generation capacity, proportion of hydropower in energy, scale of hydropower stations. He pointed out that hydropower was one of the major energy sources for South American countries, and had a very important position. However, there are pervasive problems in dam surveillance and management. He suggested that dam risks should be reduced by introduction of comprehensive dam safety surveillance and management. Prof. Marcano was Director, Department of Hydraulics, Caroni Hydroelectric Company, Venezuela. His main research areas include hydraulic structures, dam safety, dam failure modelling, etc.
The title of Dr. Serret’s report was The Spanish Experience in Design and Construction for Port Breakwaters — The Last Fifteen Years Development. He firstly briefed the Center of Studies and Experimentation of Public Works (CEDEX) and Center for Ports and Coastal Studies of CEDEX, the Ministry of Public Works, Spain. And then he introduced the development history, constraint and status quo of Spanish ports, analyzed the current conditions of breakwaters, and shared the cases of port expansion and relevant physical modelling. He is Director of the CEDEX Center for Ports and Coastal Studies. His main research interests are hydraulic structures, port, coast and environment model tests, ship manoeuvring and inland navigation. He has finished studies for projects like dam hydraulic structures and marine feasibility studies of ports.
The lectures saw the attendance of more than 80 researchers, graduate students and managing staff from NHRI River Harbor Engineering Department, Dam Safety Management Department, Geotechnical Engineering Department, Materials and Structural Engineering Department, Hydraulic Engineering Department and management departments. In-depth discussions were conducted for interested topics after the lectures as well.
The two council members visited NHRI Water Experiment Center at Tiexinqiao, Naning, accompanied by director of NHRI International Cooperation Office afterwards.
