New Corps Website Focuses Research on Thin-Layer Placement of Dredged Material
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s Dredging Operations Technical Support (DOTS) Program launched a new website dedicated to the practice of thin-layer placement of dredged material. The website officially launched during a webinar on August 31 and it will consolidate information and resources on thin-layer placement for use across the dredging industry.
“The ultimate goal of the Thin-Layer Placement of Dredged Material website is to consolidate as a living resource all information and data available from projects and literature relevant to thin-layer placement” said Cynthia Banks DOTS program manager.
The Corps said the DOTS Program provides direct environmental and engineering technical support to the Corps’ navigation and dredging missions.
The interactive highly visual tool is the result of collaborative investments from DOTS as well as the Corps’ Regional Sediment Management Program managed by Linda Lillycrop.
Damarys Acevedo-Mackey research civil engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) will be presenting. Her main research and development focus is on the beneficial use of dredged material and remediation technologies for contaminated sediments soils and water for the purpose of deter-mining effectiveness of remediation technologies.
The new site contains a growing body of searchable resources pertaining to all stages of dredged-material based beneficial use proj-ects including those pertinent to conceptualization design implementation and long term management.
“Users can do a broad category search to locate resources relevant to a specific project stage and ultimately will be able to access and download data and project information through a map-based data-base” Acevedo-Mackey said.
The site includes a GIS-based map portal for submitting case studies and for displaying data and resources associated with each case study. This tool will integrate a robust repository of resources that are part of the Navigation Data Integration Framework Initiative to facilitate project planning.
Information available through the map portal includes navigation channels (from the National Channel Framework) dredging schedules placement areas thin-layer placement projects source material location sediment data (from the sediment analysis and geo-app saga) and hydrodynamic site data.
The new site will continue to integrate new information from across the dredging community.
“In order to add relevant information to our database we will solicit case studies modeling tools references sediment data and other re-sources that may be useful in the context of thin layer placement projects from our community of practice” Banks said.
