Participation

We are targeting the following participation at the conference:

WEDA Papers - ~ 50%
CEDA Papers - ~ 30%
EADA Papers - ~ 20%

Abstracts and Technical Papers

We will have only technical papers - no posters. As per your request, the call for papers require authors to submit the abstracts to the CEDA and EADA offices. Once you get all the abstracts on October 20, please forward them to me and I will forward them to the entire technical paper committee for review and decision making process.

Please do not make accept/reject decisions on the abstracts unless it is obvious that a paper is not suited for WODCON. Otherwise, that decision will be made with the general consensus of the international paper committee once all abstracts are received.

Conference Sessions

We are planning on 4.5 days of conference, with a 0.5 day break in between for family events. So, the technical conference will span 4 days. We envision three parallel sessions over the 4 day duration.

We encourage thematic sessions. This will be of particular interest to the audience. We are targeting a few special projects in the USA for such sessions. I would encourage the CEDA and EADA technical paper committee members to do the same - some projects that come to mind include the Palm Island in the Middle East; and the Le Havre Port project - I am sure there are others. We would love to see special sessions dedicated to various aspects of these projects - including early planning, site characterization, dredging design, dredging implementation and post contruction monitoring/results. There may be senior personnel from the organizations involved with such projects who could chair such special sessions.

Paper Format

There is no special format requirement for the abstract other than the fact that it should have a title, author contact information (and identification of the contact author, otherwise, the default would be the first author), and brief 1-2 paragraph description of the paper. Instructions for paper preparation will be forthcoming and will be sent to the authors of all accepted papers in November.

Peer Review

Peer review of the papers will be responsibility of the technical paper committee members of the respective regions (eg, WEDA will handle WEDA papers, and so on). Due to the expected volume of papers, it may be wise to recruit subcommittees of reviewers for each region - we will leave this up to the committee members in the region to decide. We can acknowledge all reviewers in the CD proceedings at the end, to appreciate their efforts.

Please email me if I can be of any additional help. We will be in touch again soon with the members of the technical paper committee with more details on expected program duration and other specific information.

Regards
Ram
email: rmohan@bbl-inc.com

At this Congress, the following "Best Paper Awards" will be presented

IADC (International Association of Dredging Contractors) $1000.00 (U.S.)

Note: For authors to be eligible for IADC Award they must not be older than 35 years of age. Therefore, all authors are requested to include with both your abstract and final manuscript your Date of Birth.

DCA (Dredging Contractors of America)

Best Paper (1st Place)
$1000.00 (U.S.)

WEDA (Western Dredging Association)

DCA Best Paper (2nd Place) $500.00 (U.S.)
DCA Best Paper (3rd Place) $250.00 (U.S.)
Best Student Paper Award $500.00 (U.S.)

Also at this congress there will be a Minimum of Four Door Prizes presented Daily, plus a grand door prize of $1000.00 and Hotel Accommodations at WEDA XXVII/ TAMU 39 2007 Convention/Exhibition during the closing ceremonies. (You must be present at the drawing to win the $1000.00 Grand Door Prize and/or the Hotel Accommodations.

Conference deadlines are the following:

    Submission of one-page abstracts: October 20, 2006
    Notification of authors: December 1, 2006
    Submission of final manuscript: January 10, 2007