INNOVATION January-February 2022

F E A T U R E

“FLOOD MANAGEMENT IN BC NEEDS A REALLY HARD LOOK” Flood management in BC is a local government responsibility with provincial funding and oversight. “The municipalities have limited funding to put into built infrastructure,” said Paré, “and so their risk tolerance might be a bit higher based on competing priorities. Often, they will only build to current codes and standards because that’s what they can afford to build. The emergency funding from higher levels of government that becomes available during disaster recovery could have a much more significant impact if applied to making our communities more resilient to disasters in the first place.” “Some local governments just do not have the capacity to investigate, understand and mitigate their flood hazards,” said van der Eerden. According to Peters, the floodplain management community has the necessary knowledge, and we need professional engineers working with all levels of government to direct government funding toward initiatives backed by the best science and engineering knowledge available. Kennedy warns that “[large] events that happen tend to lead to action. But then we know from repeated experience, that momentum fades with time.” According to Peters, the last major flood on the Fraser River, in 1948, triggered sustained funding for the Fraser River Flood Control Program, but this funding ran out in the early 1990s. The past 30 years has not brought significant funding for upgrades to the Fraser River diking system. Peters hopes that “perhaps this flood event was big enough to [convince people] that we need to work on this for a long time.” CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE Paré asks a crucial question: “What is the responsibility of professionals to

updates will improve Canada’s resilience against floods and other disasters. How do we design for these extreme, emerging events? “We need to make informed engineering judgments,” Kennedy said. “Even when we do the simulations and projections, we still have to decide […] how those will factor into our designs.” Van der Eerden and Kennedy agree that those judgments can be informed by completing risk assessments. “We need to understand what the hazards are, the likelihood of those hazards occurring, and the consequences if they do occur, including looking at the impacts of climate change. If we don’t understand the hazard, we don’t quantify the risk, and we don’t take appropriate action, then it will happen again.” Once you complete a risk assessment, you can evaluate the residual risk of choosing one adaptation option over another because some risk will always remain. Paré said, “Engineers and geoscientists work with the best information that we have and we manage uncertainty through risk management.” Paré outlined two routes engineers can take in designing for climate resilience, considering cost and owner risk tolerance: “You could look at a worst-case scenario and build a robust design so that it’s going to function as designed throughout its lifespan. You can also look at more adaptive or flexible design, which may include changing particular system components to be more resilient as the climate is changing without having a heavy up-front cost.” An adaptive design requires monitoring to see when upgrades are needed. Van der Eerden and Paré emphasized the need for both structural approaches and nature-based solutions; for example, for many river systems in BC, setting the dikes back further would create wetland environments and additional capacity for the fluctuations in water levels.

Aerial view of the Allenby Road slide, near Duncan, BC. P HoTo : m INISTRy of T RANSPoRTATIoN AND I NfRASTRUCTURE ( flICkR . Com / PHoToS / TRANBC )

P HoTo : m INISTRy of T RANSPoRTATIoN AND I NfRASTRUCTURE ( flICkR . Com / PHoToS / TRANBC )

This is not only an engineering responsibility. Kennedy said that

incorporate [climate change adaptation] into our various practices?” Engineers and Geoscientists BC provides a wealth of professional practice resources in the Climate Change Information Portal (at egbc.ca/ClimatePortal ). Many national codes and standards are being updated to incorporate climate design data. Another resource is climatedata.ca , which is a data portal that provides climate projections for a series of indicators across Canada.

highway and bridge standards in BC. Many Canadians are likely aware of BC’s earthquake and flood risks, and both need to be incorporated in a resilient infrastructure design. Kennedy chairs the seismic sub-committee for the Canadian Standards Association’s Canadian National Bridge Design Code and is also assisting CSA with updating the bridge code for climate change adaptation for 2025. Kennedy believes these

above and beyond any other jurisdiction in the country. The work that MoTI and Engineers and Geoscientists BC have done together in developing professional practice guidelines that incorporate a risk management approach to climate change adaptation into practice should be seen as an example of setting the duty of care for other professionals.” Beyond that, Kennedy believes that this event is going to be a catalyst for improved

engineers and geoscientists are working with climate scientists more than ever before in his career. Paré agrees: “This is actually a multidisciplinary, collaborative problem to solve. We need geoscientists, we need engineers, we need planners, we need biologists, we need climate scientists, because there is not just one solution to living in a changing climate.”

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