Towards a framework for the rapid prediction of dam construction and operational and maintenance costs in Australia

Australia is the world's driest inhabited continent. Its rivers also have the world's highest inter-annual variability of flow. Together these factors partly explain why Australia has the highest volume of stored water per capita in the world. The dams that store this water are vital infrastructure for reliably meeting the increasing demand for water from Australia's residential, recreational, industrial, and agricultural users and for power generation. However, dams often come at a large cost, in terms of environmental, social and opportunity costs, but also the capital cost associated with their construction and on-going operation and maintenance. The process of estimating the capital cost of a dam can be complex and cost overruns can be substantial. The capital cost of a dam, varies depending on a range of factors including dam size and type, topography, geology and proximity to labour and materials. In this paper we investigate Australia's surface water resources from an economic perspective by collating information on capital and operational and maintenance costs and reservoir performance from over 80 large dams from across Australia. More specifically multiple linear regression analysis was used to develop generic relationships between dam capital cost (and operational and maintenance cost) and a variety of dam and catchment attributes, including dam dimensions, impounded volume, catchment size, surrounding topography, time of completion, and spillway capacity. The resulting relationships for the rapid, preliminary estimation of dam costs are reported herein.