This course teaches the following specific knowledge and skills:
- Students will understand that ethical behavior requires taking greatly increased precautions if the risk of catastrophic failure is found to have increased;
- Students will understand that ethical behavior requires assuming responsibility for ensuring that safety is maintained, when an existing project is modified;
- Students will learn that ethical behavior requires recognizing one’s own limitations of technical expertise and accordingly seeking guidance from knowledgeable personnel, when applying one’s expertise to a narrowly focused modification of a large complex project, the general theory and practice of which are not included in one’s expertise;
- Students will know that ethical behavior requires determining how overall safety of a large complex project can be affected by individual tasks, often seemingly small;
- Students will understand that ethical behavior requires being familiar with the assumptions used in the original design of a complex project and how safety will be affected by proposed modifications in the project;
- Students will learn the principle that ethical behavior requires documenting the reasoning behind technical decision making so that mistakes can be identified and avoided in the future;
- Students will learn the theory, construction, and maintenance of rockfill dams; and
- Students will understand the techniques for monitoring and failure modes of rockfill dams.
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