39th ECCE Meeting

37th ECCE Meeting, Madrid, April 2003

ECCE Gets a Spring in its Step - Madrid Meeting, April 2003

A visit to Spain is not complete without a chance to sample the sights and sounds of this latin country. Members spent a very enjoyable evening watching the traditional flamenco dancing of Spain after the first day of our meeting. This traditional dance form is alive and well in the 21st century.

In his welcoming presentation to ECCE members, Spain’s national representative, Jose Maria Fluxa Ceva explained how, for professional engineers, the Colegio is forming a bridge between its historic past and its vision of the future. It reflects the varied professional interests of its membership which encompass environmental issues, transportation and infrastructure, ports and coastal work, urbanism and structural engineering.

A dancer performs before ECCE members at Madrid's Café de Chinitas

… and the ‘official’ ECCE ladies,

Left to right: Ulrike Biebelmann (Deutsche Sektion des ECCE), Diana Maxwell (Secretary General, ECCE), Jette Bohsen (Colegio de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos), Inessa Loukmanova (Deputy Chairman, Russian Society of Civil Engineers), Gülay Karaküçük (SecretaryGeneral, Turkish Chamber of Civil Engineers)

President of the Colegio de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos, SrJuan Miguael Villar Mir hosts a luncheon for ECCE members within the Colegio.

To the left of Sr Villar Mir are Diana Maxwell, ECCE Secretary General and to the right, ECCE President Yrjoe Matikainen

ECCE Site Visit to the River Tagus Hydroinformatics Centre

The technical highlight of our meeting in Spain was a very interesting visit to view the operations of the Hydroinformatics centre for the River Tagus basin in Spain.

This nerve centre is the hub for all data collection in the basin, receiving information on rainfall, the state of dam spillways and valving, hydropower generation, reservoir levels and river flows. The visit started with an overview of the Tagus river basin describing water demands from the various sectors and the hydrological and hydro-geological regime of the catchment.

We then moved to the data observation and control centre, a state-of-the-art information centre using television, video linking, radio and data lines connected through software systems which log and record the current status of all the hydrological aspects of the basin.

Rainfall is recorded at diverse points in the catchment and with the knowledge of the state of hydraulic controls various scenarios for flood alleviation, power generation and irrigation need assessed.

Richard Coackley, ICE, UK

Yrjoe Matikainen thanks staff of. who gave a detailed and illuminating presentation of the automated system used to organise the hydrological plan which covers the Tagus basin.