The first known dam to be built is the Jawa Dam, which is actually the largest in a series of dams

that are all part of one reservoir system. Located in modern-day Jordan, the Jawa Dam was
originally constructed around 3,000 BCE in what was then Mesopotamia. Surprisingly, the Jawa
Dam was actually an architectural feat of the times. While most ancient dams were simple gravity
dams constructed of gravel and masonry, the Jawa Dam was reinforced with rock fill behind the
upstream wall in order to protect the wall from water pressure breach. This safety feature was
incredibly innovative for this time period. Unfortunately, the reinforced design was forgotten after the
Jawa Dam and was not actually “reinvented” until modern times. The Jawa Dam site is arguably the
most important archaeological site in the history of large-scale water projects, and the dam itself was
so well designed and constructed that the ancient structure stood until just a few years ago, when it
was partially ruined due to physical intervention. In its prime, the Jawa Dam was 15 feet tall, 80 feet
long, with a base of 15 feet. It created the Jawa Reservoir that had a capacity of 1.1 million cubic
feet.

Subsequent ancient dams were built by several cultures with varying rates of success.
Approximately 400 years after the construction of the highly successful Jawa Dam, Egyptians built
the Sadd el-Kafara, or Dam of the Pagans, most likely to supply water to the local quarries outside of
Cairo rather than for irrigation, since the flooding Nile would have supplied plenty of water to the
farmers. After ten years of construction, the masonry dam was 37 feet tall, 348 feet long, with a base
of 265 feet, contained over 100,000 tons of gravel and stone, and had a limestone cover to resist
erosion. Unfortunately, as it was nearing completion, it failed. Due to poor design and lack of a
spillway, the dam washed away during a heavy rainfall and was never repaired or completed.
Discouraged by the failure of this massive project, ancient Egyptians were dissuaded from
constructing other dams until many years later.

The Romans, highly regarded for their advances in hydraulic engineering, were prolific in dam
construction during the height of the empire. In addition to the vast network of aqueducts, the
Romans built a plethora of gravity dams, most notably the Subiaco Dams, which were constructed
around 60 AD to create a pleasure lake for Emperor Nero. The Subiaco Dams were a series of three
gravity dams on the Aniene River in Subiaco, Italy, the largest of which stood 165 feet tall and held
the honor of being the tallest dam in the world until its destruction in 1305, historically attributed to
two careless monks. The Romans also constructed the world’s first arch dam in the Roman province
of Gallia Narbonensis, now modern-day southwest France, in the 1st century BCE. The remains of
the Glanum Dam, the first recorded true arch dam in history, were discovered in 1763. Unfortunately,
a modern arched gravity dam replaced the ancient structure in 1891, and all remnants of the Glanum
Dam were lost. The Romans were also responsible for constructing the world’s first buttress dams,
although they tended to fail due to their too-thin construction. One third of all dams on the Iberian
Peninsula were buttress dams.

Asian cultures also contributed to dam engineering. As early as 400 BCE, Asians built earthen
embankments dams to store water for the cities of Ceylon, or modern-day Sri Lanka. In the 5th
century AD, the Sinhalese built several dams to form reservoirs to catch the monsoon rains for their
intricate irrigation system, and many of these reservoirs are still in use today. Around the 12th
century AD, about 4,000 dams were built by an egotistical Sinhalese ruler, King Parakrama Babu.
While these structures were gargantuan for the time, such as one dam that stretched for almost nine
miles, they are not considered to have any true engineering significance, as they did not supply
water to the villages. Built to massage the king’s giant ego, these enormous dams were monuments
rather than functional structures.
Japan and India also contributed to early dam engineering, with much success. In fact, five of the ten
oldest dams still in use are located in these two countries. The oldest operational dam in the world,
the Lake Homs Dam in Syria, was built around 1300. The masonry gravity dam is over one mile
long, 23 feet high, and creates Lake Homs, which still supplies water to the people of Homs today.

During the dark ages, dam construction came to a near halt, resuming around the 15th century AD.
During this time, no major contributions to dam engineering were made, and the majority of the
dams constructed in Europe, where rainfall is plentiful and regular, were modest structures. It wasn’t
until the 1850s, when civil engineering professor William John Macquorn Rankine at Glasgow
University demonstrated a better understanding of earth stability and structural performance, that
dam engineering improved. In fact, Rankine’s work was so innovative, it contributed to the
acceptance of civil engineering as a valid university subject and improved the status of civil
engineers. Since Rankine, geological, hydrological, and structural scientific contributions have been
extensive, and the understanding of dam engineering has improved significantly as a result.

The Romans were the first to build arch dams, where the reaction forces from the abutment
stabilizes the structure from the external hydrostatic pressure, but it was only in the 19th century that
the engineering skills and construction materials available were capable of building the first large-
scale arch dams.
Three pioneering arch dams were built around the British Empire in the early 19th century. Henry
Russel of the Royal Engineers oversaw the construction of the Mir Alam dam in 1804 to supply
water to the city of Hyderabad (it is still in use today). It had a height of 12 m (39 ft) and consisted of
21 arches of variable span.[27]
In particular, the Jones Falls Dam, built by John Redpath, was completed in 1832 as the largest dam
in North America and an engineering marvel. In order to keep the water in control during
construction, two sluices, artificial channels for conducting water, were kept open in the dam. The
first was near the base of the dam on its east side. A second sluice was put in on the west side of
the dam, about 20 ft (6.1 m) above the base. To make the switch from the lower to upper sluice, the
outlet of Sand Lake was blocked off.
The first such dam was opened two years earlier in France. It was the first French arch dam of
the industrial era, and it was built by François Zola in the municipality of Aix-en-Provence to improve
the supply of water after the 1832 cholera outbreak devastated the area. After royal approval was
granted in 1844, the dam was constructed over the following decade. Its construction was carried
out on the basis of the mathematical results of scientific stress analysis.
The era of large dams was initiated with the construction of the Aswan Low Dam in Egypt in 1902, a
gravity masonry buttress dam on the Nile River. the British began construction in 1898 and finished
in 1902. On completion, it was the largest masonry dam in the world.
The Hoover Dam is a massive concrete arch-gravity dam, constructed in the Black Canyon of
the Colorado River, on the border between the US states of Arizona and Nevada between 1931 and
1936 during the Great Depression. In 1928, Congress authorized the project to build a dam that
would control floods, provide irrigation water and produce hydroelectric power. The winning bid to
build the dam was submitted by a consortium called Six Companies, Inc. Such a large concrete
structure had never been built before, and some of the techniques were unproven. The torrid
summer weather and the lack of facilities near the site also presented difficulties. Nevertheless, Six
Companies turned over the dam to the federal government on 1 March 1936, more than two years
ahead of schedule.
 Power generation

Hydroelectric power is a major source of electricity in the world. Many countries have rivers with
adequate water flow that can be dammed for power generation purposes. The reservoir water is
stored at a higher level than the turbines, which are housed in a power station. Sometimes, the
power station is directly in front of a dam, and pipes through the dam feed water directly to the
turbines. In other cases, the power station is some distance downhill from the reservoir, and the
water is fed to it through long pipes or tunnels called penstocks.

Ambuklao Dam- found in Benguet. It can produce 105 Megawatts of Electricity

Stabilize water flow / irrigation

Dams are often used to control and stabilize water flow, often for agricultural purposes and irrigation.
Plants will grow naturally on fertile soil that is watered by rain. However, in regions of the world
where the climate is very dry for some seasons, the soil becomes so dry that it restricts the growth of
vegetation. This problem can be overcome by irrigation, a man-made system for watering the land.

Irrigation water can be stored in reservoirs during the rainy season, then in the drier seasons it can
be released from the reservoir and distributed over the land through a system of canals. Usually, the
water flows under the influence of gravity to the areas requiring it, or the water can be pumped out of
the canals onto the land.

Flood prevention

Water from snow and rainfall will find its way into stream and rivers and eventually into the sea. After
severe storms, or heavy snow or rain over a number of days, the water level in rivers can rise
dramatically. Sometimes, the water flows over riverbanks or walls causing flooding of farmland,
property, and in the worst cases, loss of life.

A reservoir can be used to control the amount of water flowing in a river after heavy rain. The water
level in the reservoir is kept low during the rainier periods of the year. When heavy rain occurs, it is
stopped by the dam and held back in the reservoir. When the reservoir gets too full, the floodwater
can be passed downstream over a spillway. Sometimes, floodgates are used on top of spillways,
and they can be fully or partly opened to control the amount of water let out into the river
downstream. Dams such as the Blackwater dam of Webster, New Hampshire and the Delta Works
are created with flood control in mind.

The San Roque Dam, operated under San Roque Multipurpose Project (SRMP) is a 200-meter-tall,
1.2 kilometer long embankment dam on the Agno River. It is the largest dam in the Philippines and
sixteenth largest in the world (see List of largest dams in the world). It spans the municipalities
of San Manuel and San Nicolas, Pangasinan and is nearly 200 km north of Metro Manila.
The dam impounds a reservoir with a surface area of about 12.8 square kilometers extending North
into the municipality of Itogon, Benguet. A gated spillway protects the dam from overtopping. Each
wet season, the run-off is stored for later release via water turbines to generate power and irrigate
crops.
Navigation

The construction of a dam across a river forms a reservoir that raises the water level upstream,
stores the water, and slows down its rate of flow. This improves the navigation conditions upstream
of the dam for ships and boats. Dangerous areas of rocks and sandbanks, previously in shallow
water, become well covered, and rapids in the river disappear. Also, water from the reservoir can be
released into the river downstream during the drier seasons of the year to make sure that it is deep
enough for navigation all the year round.

Land reclamation

Dams (often called dykes or levees in this context) are used to prevent ingress of water to an area
that would otherwise be submerged, allowing its reclamation for human use.

Water supply of urban areas/ Industrial usage

Many urban areas of the world are supplied with water abstracted from rivers pent up behind low
dams or weirs. Examples include London - with water from the River Thames and Chester with
water taken from the River Dee. Other major sources include deep upland reservoirs contained by
high dams across deep valleys such as the Claerwen series of dams and reservoirs.

Angat Dam is a concrete water reservoir embankment hydroelectric dam that supplies the Manila
metropolitan area water. It was a part of the Angat-Ipo-La Mesa water system. The reservoir
supplies about 90 percent of raw water requirements for Metro Manila through the facilities of
the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System and it irrigates about 28,000 hectares of
farmland in the provinces of Bulacan and Pampanga.

Recreational areas creating recreation areas or habitat for fish and wildlife, fishing, boating, sports,
other activities i.e bird watching.

Caliraya Dam- is an embankment dam located in the town of Lumban province of Laguna, in the
Sierra Madre Mountain Range of the Philippines. The reservoir created by the dam, Lake Caliraya,
initially supplied one of the oldest hydroelectric plants in the Philippines, and later became a popular
recreational area for numerous water sports and fishing.

Water diversion

A dam can be used to divert all or a portion of the flow of a river from its natural course. Diversion
dams do not generally impound water in a reservoir. Instead, the water is diverted into an artificial
water course or canal, which may be used for irrigation or return to the river after passing through
hydroelectric generators, flow into a different river or be itself dammed forming a reservoir.
Casecnan Irrigation and Hydroelectric Plant is a dam diverting water from the Casecnan and
Taan Rivers to the Pantabangan Reservoir through a 25-kilometre (16 mi) long tunnel located
near Pantabangan and Muñoz in Nueva Ecija province of the Philippines. The multi-purpose dam
provides water for irrigation and hydroelectric power generation while its reservoir affords flood
control. It was considered one of the most expensive hydroelectric plants built in the country,[1] being
next only to San Roque Dam.

A steel dam is a type of dam briefly experimented with around the start of the 20th century which
uses steel plating (at an angle) and load-bearing beams as the structure. Intended as permanent
structures, steel dams were an (arguably failed) experiment to determine if a construction technique
could be devised that was cheaper than masonry, concrete or earthworks, but sturdier than timber
crib dams.

Timber dams were widely used in the early part of the industrial revolution and in frontier areas due
to ease and speed of construction. Rarely built in modern times because of their relatively short
lifespan and the limited height to which they can be built, timber dams must be kept constantly wet in
order to maintain their water retention properties and limit deterioration by rot, similar to a barrel. The
locations where timber dams are most economical to build are those where timber is
plentiful, cement is costly or difficult to transport, and either a low head diversion dam is required or
longevity is not an issue. Timber dams were once numerous, especially in the North American West,
but most have failed, been hidden under earth embankments, or been replaced with entirely new
structures.