The paper synthesizes the activity at present in progress carried out by the ITCOLD Working Group (WG) “Benefits and problems connected to large dams: social and environmental impact management” whose Terms of References basically concern the analysis of the social, economic and environmental role of dams and their relation with a sustainable development of the territory where the infrastructures are located. The main activities of the WG refer to the set up of two complementary models: the first addressed to highlight the pro-activity of dam owners towards the “hosting territory”; the second to assess the stakeholders’ point of view. Basically, the content of the first model (Dam Owners’ Model) has been developed to assess three macro-fields of dam owners’ interventions: transfer of water and money resources to the territory; environmental management actions; promotion of local development. The second model (Stakeholders’ Model) has the aim to measure, as objectively as possible, how stakeholders perceive the dams’ role in terms of costs and benefits, the pro-activity of dam owners to mitigate negative externalities, the importance of forms of participation and co-operation in order to develop intervention strategies.The state-of-the-art of the WG’s activities is as follows:
• The Dam Owners’ Model has been submitted through questionnaires to a large number of companies which operates in the hydropower as well as in the hydro sectors and a meaningful sample of answers has been collected for about 10% of the Italian large dams. A synthesis and comments about the results will be presented and discussed in the paper.
• The Stakeholders’ Model has been recently completed and will be submitted to a sample of stakeholders in the next future. Its main lines and, hopefully, some preliminary results, will be presented in the paper.The analysis of data should provide a sketch of the state of interaction between dam owners and the multifarious world of stakeholders. The main aim of the activity promoted by ITCOLD is to facilitate the dialogue and the inter-communication between the worlds of Dam Owners and Stakeholders that have often conflictual interests, and to overcome any possible prejudice. Part of the activity presented in the paper has been financed by the Research Fund for the Italian Electrical System under the Contract Agreement between RSE SpA and the Italian Ministry of Economic Development.