 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening in whatever time zone you are. Welcome to the UNESCO IHE online seminar for alumni. This is the fourth seminar that we organize in series that hopefully extends many years to come. And this fourth seminar is dedicated to our new alumni, the group that graduated just last month. And not quite incidentally the speaker today is an example of the group that graduated today. But first two small comments. We try to involve you using a little question answer session called CAHOOT, for which you have hopefully read that you are to download a little app on your mobile or tablet called CAHOOT. That allows you to answer the questions that we show you on the monitor. Secondly, it is also possible to ask your own questions to the speaker by either Twitter on the account of hashtag alumni OS and the word alumni and OS from online seminar is with capital letters. Or you can send that by email to alumni at unescoihe.org. So, two ways of interacting with the speaker. Today, who is the speaker that is actually Oscar Soto Reyes, just graduated. He is a civil engineer, initially graduated from the Technical University of Panama, holding an MSc degree in management of logistics and transportation from Chalmers University of Technology in Göttenberg, Sweden. Moreover, here in UNESCO IHG Delft, he has recently obtained his master's degree in coastal engineering and port development. Oscar is a well-experienced person in the field, 15 years of experience in governmental and private sectors, as well as in the field of inspection, consultancy and management of construction contracts. But what we are talking today is the most important part of his experience. Since 2009, Oscar works in several qualities on the expansion of the Panama Canal, obviously, in Panama. And that precisely is the topic of his presentation today, which is the Panama Canal expansion, building the future and honoring the past. And with that, Oscar, you are the pleasure of giving your presentation. Thank you very much for the social nice introduction, Martin. So welcome everyone, good day, and welcome to this webinar, Panama Canal expansion, building the future, honoring the past. We will follow the agenda as shown in the slide. We will start with some location and key figures about the Republic of Panama. Then we will touch upon the Chagres River basin development and the importance for the Panama Canal. Then we will jump into the Panama Canal expansion program, emphasizing the three main features of the project, namely the concrete structures, the filling and emptying system, and the lock gates. In addition to that, we will also approach some operational issues and some new features of the third set of locks. And we will conclude with some final remarks. The Republic of Panama, location and key figures. The Republic of Panama is located in Central America with neighbors Colombia to the East and Costa Rica to the West. And we have the Caribbean side to the North and the Pacific Ocean to the South that brings the country with more than 3,000 linear kilometers of shorelines. Also, we are 4 million inhabitants living there and in a surface of 75,000 square kilometers. The most important thing about the economic development is that since 2009, we have had a sustained yearly growth of more than 7% per GDP. So the Republic of Panama, which we zoom a little bit out from the previous slide, we can see that we are located just in the waist of the American continent and in the crossroads between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. So then, since the emergence of the Ismus from the oceans, we have been by nature the link between the Americas and between the two oceans. So it is not just a matter of a geological grant resource, which is the location, but it's also driven by the global commerce and maritime trade especially. So since, as we have seen before, we will speak a little bit about the Panama Canal, but for this presentation specifically, we will emphasize the importance of the Chagras River based in development. So as we saw, maritime trade and commerce were the main drivers to encourage different people at different eras to find a crossing and a link between the two seas, a path between the two seas. So since 1524, when the king charged the 5th of Spain for the first studies to analyze the feasibility of a canal linking the two oceans, then it wasn't feasible by then, but what they did, implementing it, was the first multimodal route linking the two oceans using the Chagras River as the inland waterway transport mean and complementing it with a road path all the way to the Pacific side. Afterwards, many, many years after indeed, in 1849, the gold mines were discovered in San Francisco, California. So that prompted another mode of transportation across the Isthmus of Panama, namely the first trans-isthmian railway that was built in between the years 1855 and 1885. But then in 1889, Ferdinand de Les Eps, the builder of the Suez Canal, also came to the Isthmus with the intention of, for a new adventure to build a level canal across the Isthmus. However, tropical diseases and some maladministration didn't allow him to complete his enterprise. So in 1903, the US took over the project and when they did that, they had to reassess the engineering. So they were facing two different engineering options, namely either digging down the earth and the continental divide to continue with the Les Eps project as a level canal or rising the waters. So rising the chips to an artificial lake to be built and then to cross the Isthmus in that way. So after many analysis, they came out with the final solution of raising the waters and using the Chagres River as the main component of the project, damming the river twice with Gatun Dam near the mouth of the river on the Atlantic side and with Madden Dam upstream. And in that way, they created then the biggest artificial lake in the world that held that record until the construction of Hoover Dam in the US. So with the rising the water solution, the US managed to solve and to tackle the three main problems of a level canal which are avoiding the tidal currents because on the Pacific side, the tidal range, namely the difference between high tide and low tide is 7 meters. Whereas on the Atlantic side, that difference is only 1 meter. The second issue they managed to solve with the rising the water solution was the avoiding density currents. What are density currents? Imagine a huge inflow of tropical fresh water from Chagres River getting into the sea at both sides at once then it creates currents that might not be good for navigational purposes and then probably the most important one is like by rising the waters, the US avoided 10 extra years of excavation works across the continental divide that would have rendered the project unfeasible back then. So what they did? Basically they dam the Chagres River twice at Kattu Dam near the mouth of the river on the Atlantic Ocean or the Caribbean Sea side and upstream at Madden Lake just as a redundancy for the system. So basically, as you can see here in this profile, this is the amount of excavation work they avoided and this is the final engineering configuration they came up with. Gatun logs, three steps on the Atlantic side, then they created by Gatun Dam, they created the then, back then the biggest artificial lake in the world and that was until the building of the Hoover Dam in the US and afterwards they built the three other steps to get down to the Pacific side and Pedro Miguel one step, then Miraflores Lake which is a buffer lake between the Pacific and the Gatun Lake and then the two last steps going south of Miraflores logs. Just quickly reviewing the Gatun Dam, it's the core of the project that this structure is the one we cannot afford to lose or to be broken by any reason. It will take us in addition to the construction of the new dam two extra years to fill in the lake and that depends also on the climate change. So it's not only Gatun Dam that is related to this project, it's also Madden Dam upstream, Chagras River that holds Madden Lake which is the source of the potable water for Panama City the biggest water treatment plant takes the water from Madden Lake and not from Gatun Lake and then we have Miraflores Dam that holds Miraflores Lake the buffer we spoke about before. So summarizing this video, imagine we are sailing from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific then the ships sail through the three steps, nine meters or less and then they sail up on Gatun Lake then they sail across Gailar Cod or Culebra Cod which is the continental divide then one step down at Pedromigel then they enter into the Miraflores Lake and then they get two steps down at Miraflores and then they get into the ocean. Quiz time! Okay, thanks Oskar, we take over and we are now going to ask you the questions that you quickly saw already just a minute ago but to which you can answer on your own mobile or tablet So the system is loaded, there we go Get your tablet and are you ready to join? So we have already four people in the system please put in your name, most specifically preceded by the gamepin that you have to put into your mobile and now we see the number of people coming we wait for maybe a few more seconds until we have already six people coming in so folks please take that number into your tablet or computer assuming that you have uploaded the Kahoot app and then we go and start with the first question that was ready for you and they're coming one out of five if we go to all question is what is the name of the river that allowed the construction of the Panama Canal and you just push one of the colors or one of the names that you think is the correct one and then we go from there and you still have 20 seconds to finalize this first question it was mentioned by Oskar in his presentation and then you Oskar you will release the right answer correct The right answer is the red one, Chagras River indeed Okay, there you go, what are yours again? So now we are jumping into the Panama Canal Expansion Program itself So first the regionally behind the expansion, why? The reason and basically two reasons, progress and economies of scale You can see in the black and white picture here this is the steamer and cone, the first transit of 1914 Panama Canal and you can see the dimensions compared to the log chambers structures However, if you see the colorful picture to your right you can see two Panamax ships transiting the 1914 logs at its full capacity We had reached already 95% of our capacity and those ships that you see in the picture were transiting with only 60 cm at either side from the log chamber walls So as you can imagine the maritime industry and the global economy all around the world didn't wait for us to expand the Panama Canal and since 1997 the new generation of post-Panamax ships started to be built and even bigger and bigger every single year So we needed to expand so it was not only a single project it was a program because the program consisted of five main components The first one is the widening and the deepening of both the Atlantic and Entrance channels The second one and probably the flagship of the program is the construction of the third set of logs, two complexes, one on the Atlantic, one on the Pacific Then we also needed to widen and deepen the Gatun Lake and Culebra Cod navigational channels and of course we needed more water to operate the new logs so we also had to rise the maximum operational level of the Gatun Lake from 26.7 to 27.13 meters and fifth but not the least we also had to build a new access channel on the Pacific side because as we saw previously the first 1914 Panama Canal on the Pacific side because of the topography was built in a two steps plus one step configuration whereas for the third set of logs the three steps were to be built in one single complex Just a little bit about the money cost of today and financing the total cost of the program was 5.4 billion US dollars of which funded by the Panama Canal Authority from our revenues it was 3.1 billion US dollars and financing institutions gave us loans for amounting 2.3 billion US dollars In the slide we can see the main five multilateral agencies that lend us the money and in a nutshell just to give the audience a rough order of magnitude about the quantities and the volumes of the program excavation and dredging of the expansion program was more than 150 million cubes that will be enough to fill 75 Amsterdam arenas it's like a soccer stadium in terms of concrete structures the contractor pool more than 4 million cubic meters that is enough to fill more than 1147 swimming Olympic pools and in terms of reinforcing steel with the contractor installed more than 236,000 tons equalling more or less 32 Eiffel towers and the structural steel used for the log gates and the valves to control the flow of the water amounted 60,000 tons more or less 8 Eiffel towers this is just a rough idea of the magnitudes we were dealing with in the project so third set of logs is the flagship of the program as we mentioned before however the design and build contractor was the same the two complexes were different because on the Atlantic side the alignment will allow for a potential fourth set of logs to be mirrored to the east as we can see here and whereas on the Pacific side the alignment will allow for a potential fourth set of logs mirroring it to the west and in terms of geology the Atlantic side was marked by sedimentary sandstones and limestones which were fully excavated by only mechanical means whereas on the Pacific side this is the Atlantic and the Pacific side as you can see here the geology had igneous columnar basalt which really required the use of drilling and blasting the good thing of drilling and blasting on the Pacific side was that basalt was used by the contractor to produce the full range of aggregates and sand for the concrete structures so another quiz time Martin OK, happy to take over because there were so many numbers that you just saw and here you can express how much you remembered how many swimming pools and you see the dimensions of the swimming pool could be filled with the concrete of the third set of logs and you have again four choices to push on and then we see what the best answer is according to Oscar 10 seconds more for your answer, you're pushing there you go, your time is up, Oscar, what's the answer? The correct answer is B, 1150 Olympic swimming pools so let's continue let's now speak a little bit of the concrete structures but first we will speak a little bit on the dimensions of the chambers and the vessels there are many literature about the panamax dimensions of the vessels but I will just roughly tell you that the maximum capacity was a little bit more of 4000 PEUs or 4000 container boxes but for the third set of log chambers the dimensions were much bigger indeed the new vessel size was called Neopanamax Neopanamax vessels but the dimensions are much easier to remember than the panamax I will tell you why because just think about a leap year a leap year has 366 days so that's the length of the Neopanamax ship 366 meters just in the same leap year, February has 29 days so the middle day of February is the 15th of February 15th of the second month so 15.2 is the maximum depth of that ship and do you remember the discovery of the gold mines in San Francisco, California? it was in 1849 well 49 meters is the maximum width of the Neopanamax ship so 360 meters length 15.2 meters depth and then 49 meters width so concrete structures 1914 Panama Canal as you can see in these two pictures especially the left one only massive concrete was used so that means that no steel bars were embedded into the concrete everything was massive and everything was just compacted by means of some electrical vibrators or even by human force as you can see here in the picture on your right you will see also another picture showing the different lifts or different steps of the concrete pools and you cannot see whatsoever looking like a reinforcing steel bar going through the structures two more pictures about the methods that were used by the US to pour the concrete into the structures they use railways mainly and they use railway buckets and railway mixers and they also made use of cable ways to pour concrete into the structures once more we cannot see and we will not see any steel ribar coming out the lifts and then this is the third set of locks project and what you can see here a huge amount of concrete of steel and why? because it's not that the seismic conditions have changed but the seismic design requirements have changed over 100 years so that's why the design build contractor really had to install such amount of steel for seismic design considerations and of course you can see here this is an example of the congestion that also brought an additional challenge to the contractor to develop the right concrete mixes up to 10 different classes of concrete were designed and were poured into the project and of course for such a massive project the contractor had to work 24-7 only using the Sundays to keep maintenance to the batching plants but all the other days he poured up to 6000 cubic meters per day in one site so the final product, the deliverable so we can see here the lock chambers, the idea of these two slides is to show you a little bit of the structures but hopefully when you visit Panama and you visit the Panama Canal you won't be able to see because everything is under water now so these are the lock chambers you can see the full the two fender lines that gives you an idea of the step 9 meters between two of them and the lateral points of the concrete structures and then we can see here what we call the lock heads or the recesses where the gates are kept when they are not in use or to allow the chips to transit from chamber to chamber another two important structures are the inlet structures which take the water from the Gatun lake and the outlet structures which spill the water into the oceans so another quiz time there we go again following up on your wonderful set of numbers and in present presentation question number 3 how many swimming pools and you see the dimensions could be filled with the concrete of the third set of locks which will be the next yeah I'm a bit surprised this one ok here we go we had the wrong one what are the dimensions of the Neopanamax vessels and you have four three choices of the vessel sizes which one is the correct one and after 18 seconds more Oscar is going to tell us what these huge machines are how huge the machines are that can actually pass through time is up Oscar tell us well the answer is the yellow one 266 meters was the key figure there wow see so let's continue then let's jump into the hydraulic system or the filling and emptying systems 1914 Panama Canal as we can see here these are the cool birds or the transporting the water for the 1914 Panama Canal but let's put a special attention to the how the system fills and empties the lock chambers which is through the bottom or the floor of the lock chambers right as we can see here another interesting point of view here is the step this step is more or less the nine meters of the step that the the chips either go up or go down in every lockage however for the third set of locks the idea was an innovation to use water saving bases or in other simple words some really huge pools to recycle the water whenever it was necessary to recycle especially during the dry seasons so the system basically was required to provide savings minimum 60% of the water used so imagine there is a chip that is going down so how the system should work and it's working really is 20% goes for the first pool the second 20% goes to the second pool the third 20% goes to the third pool and then that makes 60% saving or recycling the other 40% is spilled into the ocean let's do the reverse process because also the chips have to go up so the first 20% is filled from the first pool the second 20% is filled from the second pool the third 20% is filled from the third pool and then the other 40% is taken from the lake there are many presentations around that only briefly speak to you about 7% that the new structures use 7% less water than the old ones and of course the logical question is like how can it be because the structures are much bigger the water volume is much bigger the chips are much bigger so this is the answer we made this spreadsheet ourself the key figure is here is the 40% that is actually lost to the sea for every chip that makes that the total volume of water using for every chip to transit the new logs is 93% of the total volume used for one chip transiting the old logs so that 7% that you will see in many other presentations comes from this calculation so once more this is the new chambers you see the two line of vendors that's more or less 9 meters distance and this is the total the 100% of the volume of water used that is used in total of which 60% is safe and thanks to these huge pools we are seeing here so once more we are going to see the full process again first let's everything that conducts the water flow in the direction longitudinal to the alignment of the canal longitudinal is called a culvert and every structure that conducts the water in the direction transfers to the alignment of the panel canal is called a conduit so once more you can see here the water flowing from the pools to the chambers then the water is rising and then once that 60% is complete then the levels are equalized using the main culverts from chamber to chamber and then the locates are open and then the cheap transits so we have seen the animations but let's do the animations ourselves let's pretend we are droplets we are, you know, water drops and we are just sitting on the pools in the pools and then let's pretend that we will fill the chambers so first we will be taken by these inlets we will go our journey to the chambers from these inlets and then we will have to cross these conduit valves in this here and once more we are now at the trifurcation where the conduit valves are installed and then we will continue our journey into the chambers once we pass the conduit valves here once more and we will go down via the trifurcation and then we will reach this point the yellow marks we are droplets, remember so now we will be taken either to the east bank or to the west bank because the lateral ports are in both sides of the structures so what will happen is that half of the water will go to the east and the other half will go to the west culverts at both sides of the locked chambers and then we will fill the secondary culverts which are culverts that are 6.5 meters by 6.5 meters and then from the secondary culverts the small ones here and we will we will fill the chambers through the 2x2 meters lateral ports remember this is one of the main differences between the all 1914 Panama Canal and the new third set of locks once more remember there are secondary culverts and primary culverts well this is how the water is exchanged from the primary culverts or the main ones to the secondary culverts when it's required to fill the chambers and also how the water flows from chamber to chamber via the primary culverts which run from the lake to the ocean the secondary culverts are dead end culverts so they stop an end in each chamber so we speak we spoke a little bit about redundancy this is a more clear illustration of that this is the primary culverts remember we can see here the approximate 9 meters level from one chamber to another one so the culvert bifurcates in 2 and everything is in 2 in this project that's called redundancy because we cannot afford to stop the operations of the Panama Canal so once more that flow is controlled by two pairs of culvert valves this really this culverts run underneath the locates themselves this is the second pair and we can see here also the four on the other bank and finally but not the least the equalization valves because the final balancing of the levels of the waters between chambers adjacent chambers is made by means of this equalization valves not via the lateral ports so we are just approaching the final the locates the third main structure the locates for the 1914 Panama Canal were mitre gates mitre gates made of steel on the side all the gates were built on side we can see here the construction phase and we can see here them in operations this is a panamax chip 13 boxes across white 13 boxes remember that number so the new gates they are not mitre gates but they are rolling gates instead they were built by a subcontractor in Italy cimolai so with special vessels the 16 of them to the Atlantic side and the eight that were they were meant for the Pacific side were transported to the Pacific Ocean using the all locks so the all locks are still operative and running to give you an idea of the magnitude of this structure this one is the biggest one in either side, Pacific or Atlantic and it's 30 meters high it's a 10 story building basically it's 10 meters wide and 57 meters in length to give you an idea here you can see the marks between each mark is 1 meter and here there is a guy I probably I'm not completely sure if you will manage to see him but the guy is the size of the red dot basically so rolling concept and loading limiting devices imagine sorry but I forgot to tell you that the wide range of the gates is between 3.6 and 4.2 thousand tons so imagine that weight that will be subjected to different forces the steel weight itself plus the balance water forces plus the unbalanced water forces plus the dry voltages when there is no water so all the all the weight has to be carried by the locks gates themselves allow me to go back a little bit because I forgot one important detail what you can see here and here are the buoyancy chambers of the gates because buoyancy will help the structures to carry on with the weight otherwise it won't be almost impossible because of the buoyancy the weight is reduced down to 10 to 20% depending on the of the gates think about the gates really similar to slices of a chip hole and chips flow so the gates are floating so that weight subject to different stresses and forces of course are said that you have to carry a really heavy weight and you need something like a wheelbarrow so the principle is basically a wheelbarrow and of course with the help of the water buoyancy also with a spark of Dutch ingenuity for the process because the subcontractor in charge of the design of the gates was a Dutch company, Ivy Group so this is basically a schematic of the gates and how they work and then here's the water because water helps also with the buoyancy and then imagine the handlers as this structure here and here then let's take over our imagination how the weight is loaded into the floor via this column we use the same concept like load columns in the gates and then of course we have to transmit that load to the floor via the wheel and here are the wheels and then and then with the spring that helps us help the gates to be put into the floor basically whenever there is a lateral force or a trespassing of the forces threshold for each gate this is the pulley system so quiz time very quickly we move to the last question because we are horribly running out of time unfortunately but again this is one of those beautiful ones what main differences between the old and the new Panama canal and again you have a choice of four answers of which you are supposed to choose the best one sometimes it can be more and in the meantime yes here we go Oscar very briefly are all the answers correct? yes indeed they are ok well unfortunately we run badly out of time because of the issue that we had before but Oscar promised to finalize within the next one or two minutes otherwise there is no time for questions anymore yeah I think we have the as a token of appreciation for your attendance we would like to take you to a virtual journey as we were just standing on the bridge of a chip in this case the chip is sailing southbound from the Atlantic to the Pacific side so we are just transiting the new set of locks we can see the gates always in two and we can see that we are leaving the upper chamber I mean we are coming from the lake we are then getting into the middle chamber we can see also the big pools we were speaking about before for recycling the water the conduit valves and then we can see the lower chamber once more the final trip so we can also here see the control building where all the operations are followed and then once more you can see here that there is no space for the locomotives or the mules so that's why we use the top boats for centering the chips in the middle of the chamber and yeah unfortunately with this video and this final virtual journey we will have to leave you time for questions thank you very much Oscar thank you so much for this marvelous presentation and just to acknowledge many of the pictures that you see in this presentation are made by the speaker himself so you can believe he knows the project in all the little micro details in the meantime I wonder if any questions have come in so far I have not seen them too many but there must be quite a few remember also audience that there is no chance that we are going to be able to answer all the questions that you might have in the next just about five more minutes that we have but do write your questions do send them by email or by Twitter because I'm quite sure that Oscar is very interested in hearing your questions because it is a long-term learning process he may also and he also will learn from some of your questions that you have mentioned no questions okay that is by itself not too much of a problem Oscar maybe I have a question already that we sort of discussed upon you have mentioned that the lake water is essential for this entire project and that one dam specifically is crucial to run the Panama Canal whether old or new can you say a few words about the potential vulnerability of the weak spots in this entire construction yes it is that dam is the most vulnerable point and not only that dam because of course it holds that lake and we really cannot afford to lose the lake but also important that was mentioned because of the time is that in addition to that that dam we have at least 20 saddle dams I mean smaller dams that also hold the lake and which are more or less equally important of course the structures are not as big as the Gatun dam but they also we cannot afford either any failure of those saddle dams because you can imagine all the perimeter of the lake we have at least 20 saddle dams to hold the lake volume yeah so water is crucial obviously Oscar that has also very much to do with the issue of the water saving approach taken in this particular construction project yeah water is crucial water sits way above where it naturally would be so saving is important you talked about a 7% loss of water how many times if there would not be any precipitation water from elsewhere how many times can that 7% loss be afforded is that a point that you can say okay but now we cannot really use any losses more because we run out of water yeah that's a thank you for the question because it's a really excellent one basically the 7% is the 7% we use 7% less water with these gates with these chambers than all ones so but the bottom line of your question is like yes water is crucial what we could do if it doesn't rain enough well the first step is just the maritime industry knows is we have to restrict the draft or the depth of the ships for instance when we start seeing the the stumps of the old trees submerged by the Gatun lake that's the first signal of alarm and then if we don't have enough rain the first step is we notify the maritime industry that it is going to be a draft or a depth of the ships restriction so that also means loss of revenues to us because that means that we cannot charge or the tolls because of the load is much lesser and it is true that's why the water is the most important resource for this project and for the life of Paramanian citizens themselves and it's also a good example of a really profitable and sustainable river basin development so it is possible to do that to achieve sustainable development and to achieve progress by means of the good use of the water resources Yeah I understand that there have not been any questions coming in so far but I am a bit of loaded with questions in the same water context has any measures be necessary in Paloma as a country to be even more secure with water management partly at least in making sure that there is water in the country enough even if needed to pump it up to the lake area is that one of the things that is being considered Yeah one of the studies from the Delta hydraulics also mentioned the possibility of enhancing the river basin by means of not pumping because neither 1914 Paloma canal nor the new set of logs used any water pumping there are no pumps in the projects but by means of channels and tunnels so we could transfer water from adjacent basins to the Chagras basin Okay unfortunately time is finished we have to stop this one hour alumni online seminar Oscar thanks once more for your fantastic presentation of an extremely beautiful topic in fact World Heritage project number eight we mentioned it yesterday thanks a lot thanks for the beautiful pictures and also thanks for the entire support staff so sitting here in the room from the IT service you can imagine that there is quite a bit of work to be done in order for this to run effectively and even though we had a little hiccup unfortunately sorry for that and for the people running behind to communicating with you in terms of reception and in terms of questions all of you thank you for attending there are more online seminars coming up you will be notified for alumni officer Maria Laura Sorrentino who is the driving force between everything related to alumni in general in this institute and the alumni online seminar in particular thank you very much for your attention thank you very much