Engineer arrested in Brumadinho case was awarded prize for analysis of Vale dam.

247 - Engineer Makoto Namba — who certified the safety of the dam that collapsed on Friday in Brumadinho (MG) and who was arrested on Tuesday morning along with four other people — was awarded a prize by the Brazilian Association of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ABMS) last year for a case study on a Vale tailings dam in Itabira (MG). The work focused on evaluating the geotechnical risk of the structure. This information comes from the newspaper O Globo. 

Nakombo was honored at a congress of the organization in July 2018 with the José Machado award, along with the other five authors of the study. Based on an analysis of the probability of the Itabiruçu dam breaking, the work warns that structures with a high risk of rupture can present supposedly satisfactory numbers and advocates for an analysis that takes into account variabilities, including the location of the dam.

Nakombo was honored at a congress of the organization in July 2018 with the José Machado award, along with the other five authors of the study. Based on an analysis of the probability of the Itabiruçu dam breaking, the work warns that structures with a high risk of rupture can present supposedly satisfactory numbers and advocates for an analysis that takes into account variabilities, including the location of the dam.

"A structure with a high probability of failure, built in a remote location, intuitively presents less criticality than a structure with a reduced probability of failure, built in a densely populated area. For this reason, risk assessment should be prioritized," says an excerpt from the study awarded by the congress. The dam that collapsed last Friday caused at least 65 deaths. According to the latest Civil Defense bulletin, 279 people remain missing. The tailings mud caused a wave of destruction in the city of Brumadinho.