We are pleased to announce the MinSouth Annual General Meeting (AGM) and the opportunity for members to join the MinSouth Council. This is an excellent chance for professionals, including young professionals and women, to contribute to our diverse and expert community. For more information about joining the council, please visit this post  (click the word “post” for the link).

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Registration for both the AGM and this lecture (you only need to register once for both) will be available on Eventbrite closer to the event date, starting from September 12th. For registration details, please visit this Eventbrite page.

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Synopsis of the Talk

This presentation aims to show, how the risk-based approach to the safety review of tailings dams can help dam owners keep societies safe and efficiently protect their assets also their reputation.

Risk-based assessment is a powerful tool to assess the safety of tailings dams by focusing on credible failure scenarios which will help identify risks, prioritise the required actions and eventually mitigate the risks in an efficient and cost-effective way. The main advantage of this method compared to the traditional standards-based assessment is the prioritisation of the risk mitigation options based on the risks associated with different failure modes.

The presentation will introduce quantitative piping risk assessment, based on the piping toolbox, a unified method for estimating probabilities of failure of embankment dams by internal erosion and piping. This method has been developed collectively by the University of NSW, URS, US Army Corps of Engineers, and US Bureau of Reclamation.

A risk-based safety assessment including the quantitative piping assessment will be presented as a case study. This case study addresses the risks to society and suggests several practicable risk mitigation options. The estimated risks for all loadings and failure modes considered are expressed as F-N plots representing the level of Societal risk and the implication of the ALARP Principal and mitigation options are discussed.

Summary of Sam (Meysam) Safavian’s Career

Sam (Meysam) Safavian
CPEng, MIEAust, NER, M.Eng, B.Eng
Principal Geotechnical, Tailings and Dams Engineer

Sam has over 20 years of experience in the fields of tailings and mine waste engineering, dams engineering and geotechnical engineering over a wide range of projects in mining, dams and other major infrastructural projects within the following areas:

· Project management

· Safety review, failure modes and risk assessment (quantitative and qualitative)

· Technical leadership (tailings/water dams)

· Numerical analyses

· Monitoring and safety analysis

· Geotechnical investigation plans and associated in-situ and lab tests

· Design and safety assessment of geotechnical structures

· Construction support

He is a registered Chartered Civil Engineer in Australia and technical committee member of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering.

Sam holds a Masters degree in Geotechnical Engineering (2007) and Bachelors of Civil Engineering (2002). He graduated from the college of commerce and management, NSW in 2017. Sam has published several papers in fields of risk assessment, unsaturated soils, problem soils, foundation engineering, landslide, embankment dams, tailing dams, and reinforced soils.