On April 22nd 2020, the Open Climate Collabathon launched a year-long event to leverage technological expertise found around the world for developing a climate accounting system.
Canada’s largest national conference on climate change adaptation was held last month in Vancouver, British Columbia. This conference brought together practitioners and academics from coast to coast to coast, including members of the Canadian Coastal Resilience Forum.
How should coastal communities in Nova Scotia cope with increased sea level rise and extreme flooding? This question motivated community members, property owners, Indigenous communities and governments to realign a section of Nova Scotia's North Onslow dyke in order to strengthen resilience to natural hazards and mitigate future flood risks.
Dr. Stephanie Chang and her team at the University of British Columbia understand that when designing appropriate solutions to combat rising sea levels, climate change and extreme weather, effective risk reduction and resilience strategies must consider local hazard and vulnerability contexts.
As the climate changes, coastal communities can expect more flooding due to storm surge and sea level rise. Managing this risk requires adaptation--actions that reduce the exposure and vulnerability of people and property to climate-related hazards and increase resilience to cope with their impacts. The City of Surrey's Coastal Flood Adaptation Strategy, initiated in 2016, is an example of a robust, participatory planning initiative that identified short, medium and long-term options to adapt to climate change risk. We spoke with Matt Osler, Senior Project Engineer, about the Strategy.
In early June, MEOPAR hosted a conference session on presenting risk-related science and academic research findings to the general public.
For scientists, academics and policy makers, communicating difficult, emotional, or complex information about natural disaster risk to the public is a challenge. How do we disseminate the right information, in a concise, respectful and effective way to the people who need it most?
Online technologies have changed the way we communicate, receive information and interact with officials during an emergency, such as a flood or wildfire.
We are notified by mobile applications when inclement weather is set to strike, we can find tsunami and flood warnings on Twitter, and Facebook notifies us if our friends or loved ones are "safe" when any disaster unfolds in their vicinity.
Canadian researcher Sara Harrison is interested in identifying opportunities for online collaboration and engagement between governments and citizens. Sara wants to understand how governments interact with their residents before, during and after a disaster. How are different governments across Canada doing this? Is there untapped potential in the way governments interact, educate and obtain information from their citizens? How could governments benefit from online citizen engagement?
The coast is emblematic of Nova Scotia, its people and its culture. About 70% of Nova Scotia’s population resides along the coast making this “coastal zone” a place where private and public development has concentrated over the years.
Sea level rise and climate change pose a serious threat for coastal properties and populations in this Atlantic Canada province. Not only does infrastructure becomes at risk of permanent inundation, but important industries to the economy can also be impacted, such as through more frequent business interruptions from damaging storm surges.
While municipalities in Canada work on adapting to a changing climate and rising tides, it is important to take into consideration lessons learned from international jurisdictions, where many urban centres have already put in place projects and initiatives to address their coastal risks.
Earlier this month, Jason Thistlethwaite—Lead of the Canadian Coastal Resilience Forum—attended CatIQ’s Canadian Catastrophe Conference (C4) held in Gatineau, Quebec.
C4 gathers perspectives across the government, academia, for- and non-profit sectors to discuss strategies on how to prepare, respond and recover from natural and man-made disasters.