Castle Stuart and the Scottish Open?

Seems that remedial work to prevent future landslides is almost complete.

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/golf/action_taken_to_avert_castle_stuart_landslides_1_1940483

Question is, will this be enough to entice another sponsor back to the Highlands?

The landslide was very unfortunate although I maintain there must have been oversights during construction in terms of allowing for heavy rainfall and drainage. It looks like a lot of land was moved to construct the course and all natural flows of water disturbed.

The article Gael has posted confirms that proper drainage could not be installed due to the land being environmentally sensitive. It seems odd that permits could be given to take a bulldozer to every square cm and then not allow drainage on top of that. Although it seems some of the issue was allowing storm water to drain into the moray firth. Where exactly does water drain naturally if not into the sea?

It would seem that unless a sponsor can be found by the end of the year the event could be in trouble. I would think the improvements would be enough, if they were even needed given the freak nature of the conditions last time, to entice a sponsor as Scottish links golf the week before the open seems a good product.

Mac, When allowing for drainage it is only required that run off be the same or less than it was prior to construction, plus drainage only has to be constructed which can cope with a return period of a certain magnitude. In the case of the rain of that tournament this almost certainly exceeded what had to be built into the design and so neither course builders or tournament directors can be blamed for the landslides.

In my early days I was technician in a structural engineers practice and my boss was designing drainage.We used to work to what was called a 20 yr event so the worst rainfall that could happen in a twenty year period was what we designed for.then he would build in various safety factors during the calcs and we usually ended up with a drain you could stand up in with a trickle of water running in the bottom.But yes the events of the summer rainfallwise must have exceeded the design criteria.
Ill go and have a lie down now

So why would drainage needs increase after building the course? If we imagine the land the course sits on is a black box and X amount of water will drain out of it. When you build the course does X or X ± n come out the box?

If X then it is a local issue on the course which they could have solved before a landslide. Assuming over the long term Y amount of water enters the box and Z amount of water stays in the box X=Y-Z.

If they have altered Z by building the course then I think they are to blame as they could have checked for landslides historically or calculated that because of a change in Z they needed to alter the drainage.

SUDS has since come into play for new developments (Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems) initially the requirement was for it to be able to cope with a 1:30 event. Now (in Scotland at least ) it is required to be a 1:200 event that is catered for. It's almost impossible to police though and any number of factors can affect how an area deals with water.

Mac, drainage needs increase because although by adding changes to the topography you increase the surface area and therefore the volume of water that the area receives.

There's also the issue of chemicals being used on the course - weedkiller, fertiliser etc etc being washed into the Moray Firth and causing environmental damage.

Sounds like it's likely they'll find a sponsor for 2012 and on, but whether it'll be the same amount as Barclays wasted err sorry invested, remains to be seen.

super that is my point.

They are allowed to put the same amount of water back into the environment from the site(X). If the amount of water entering the site over a suitable time period to measure is Y and the amount of water that stays on site is Z, Y-Z cannot exceed X(pre construction).

So be changing topography you change Z, If Z increases you will need a way to collect the water that used to drain from the site. If Z decreases and Y is constant then you will exceed X, which is not allowed. So again water needs stored.

Besides that It cant be too difficult to model water flow over and through the land for differing conditions?

Mac, I don't know what you do for a living, but you aren't an engineer. Incidents like landslides are impossible to predict, especially given localised rainfall events such as experienced at Castle Stuart.
What I mean about run off is that it cannot exceed the previous run off rate or in other words that the volume of litres/second leaving the site cannot exceed the previous run off rate, even although a greater volume of water may be present on the site. This means that there has to be attenuation, soakaways, SUDS ponds etc to hold water back and slow down the rate at which it leaves the site (also good for pollution control, and water purification.)

Planning permission cannot be granted if these requirements are not put in place, but if an event occurs which exceeds the design specification then how can anyone be blamed?

Modelling water is an increadibly difficult thing to do. I can think off hand of about 30 aspects which would affect the flow of floodwater in just a small burn system, let alone a huge area like a golf course. The factors you need to put into a model can run into hundreds, and even then you only get an indicative model.

Super is right. What ever storm event they allowed for - every drainage system has to have sensible limits - would never be able to cope with the rain that fell that week. I know, I drove through it all weekend!

The only oversight would be the storm event they allowed for. Wouldnt be suprised if there were risk assessments produced for probabilty of landslides.