Historical Development of the Water Resources Planning and Management Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers

摘要

The Water Resources Planning and Management Division began its existence as a council, the status it now holds as one of the components of ASCE's Environmental and Water Resources Institute. The predecessor organization was first authorized in 1971 as the Technical Council on Water Resources Planning and Management. This organization was approved as a trial in response to efforts to establish a new division, which had been led primarily by individuals within ASCE's Hydraulics Division and Sanitary (Environmental) Engineering Division. The primary goal of the proposed division was to address a perceived need for a single focal point for water planning and management activities. Such activities had previously been diffused across the various water-related components of ASCE due to their basic importance as a corollary of engineering decision-making related to water. The initial Council had some of the powers of a division but was subjected to special rules, one of which was the form of the Executive Committee that served as its governing body. As first appointed in 1972, it consisted of one representative fromeach of the water-related divisions. Another restriction relative to a division was the absence of a journal. During this initial period, the Journal of Hydraulics included a special section for publishing papers in the planning and management area. The Council was authorized to hold conferences, and its first general specialty conference was held in 1974 at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. (The Council's Water Resources Systems Committee held an earlier conference focusing on systems analysis in 1973 in Boulder, CO.)