Dam removals have become more common with the rising cost of maintaining aging infrastructure, public safety concerns, and growing interest in river restoration (O'Connor et al. 2015). Recent policies and funding allotments are likely to increase dam removal and river restoration efforts worldwide, particularly in the United States and parts of Europe. Strategic dam removal decision-making presents an opportunity to generate and align benefits along environmental, economic, safety, and social dimensions. We offer a set of three resources to aid in dam-removal decision-making.
- An objective-setting and metric selector tool - This interactive web application facilitates an explicit consideration of the various objectives associated with dam removal decision-making. Each objective is linked to relevant metrics, methods, and data sources to help users quantify the extent to which a management alternative can achieve an objective.
- A decision-support and prioritization framework - This framework integrates multiple decision criteria under data availability constraints, incorporates value-driven weights, and can be applied to a portfolio of dams to identify priority projects that align opportunistic, environmental, and social benefits.
- A cost estimator tool - This interactive web-based tool allows users to predict the anticipated cost of a dam removal project based on dam characteristics, hydrography, project complexity, and geographic region. Recognizing the importance of monetary cost in decision making this tool can provide a quick first level cost estimate for practitioners in the dam removal community.
We intend for these resources to be used individually or in tandem by practitioners to deliberately assess objectives, weigh multi-disciplinary tradeoffs, and streamline dam removal strategic dam removal decision making.