It is my pleasure to welcome members of NZSOLD, ANCOLD and ICOLD, as well as members of our wider community, to join us in the City of Sails for our 3 yearly New Zealand-Australia combined conference.

Through the course of the conference and the social programme, we are sure you will make the most of the opportunities to catch up with familiar faces and make new contacts.  Our trans-Tasman relationship is highly valued and we can all benefit from the information sharing, debate and development of practice that our combined events foster.

With near-real-time global news reports, barely a week goes by without us witnessing the impacts of natural disasters, climate change and population growth on infrastructure and communities.  Our Theme: Resilient Dams for Resilient Communities talks to this, encouraging us to review our current state of practice, share best practice and explore the present and future challenges that we must work collaboratively to address.   Resilience provides protection from what could otherwise be overwhelming consequences and it enables us to recover quickly, limiting social, economic and environmental damages.

We look forward to your participation and submission of papers across the wide range of sub-themes – communities, environment, emergency preparedness, water management and allocation, and lifecycle considerations to achieve resilient design, construction and operation of dams and associated water management infrastructure.