Projects - search

The Waterloo Climate Institute has been awarded a grant from Natural Resources Canada’s Climate Change Adaptation Program to accelerate the integration of climate change adaptation (CCA) knowledge and skills into professional degree programs in Canada, specifically Engineering (Civil, Environmental and Systems Design), Accounting, Architecture and Planning.   

The WHO Systematic Review: Indigenous Health and Climate Change was commissioned to explore the connections between Indigenous health, well-being, environments, biodiversity, and climate change, with a focus on gender considerations. Recognizing the complex processes related to settler/industrial colonialism and environmental dispossession, the team conducted an umbrella systematic review of existing literature to synthesize knowledge and inform policies that address the health and social needs of Indigenous communities in the context of climate change.

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are among the most vulnerable to climate change, consistently ranking high on global risk and climate vulnerability indices. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report highlights the critical challenges faced by small islands and emphasizes the need for transformational adaptation strategies. 

The RECOVER project addresses these challenges through the lens of “socio-metabolic risk” (SMR) – a systemic framework focused on the availability, integrity, and circulation of critical resources such as energy, water, and materials, which are vital for societal wellbeing. Socio-metabolic risk can be compared to circulatory health issues in humans: both limit an entity's ability to adapt and respond to significant disruptions. 

In 2023, Southwestern Public Health (SWPH) in partnership with the University of Waterloo’s Climate Institute, conducted an in-depth assessment of climate-related health risks and vulnerabilities for SWPH.  A second phase of the partnership between SWPH and the Climate Institute focused on designing an experiment to operationalize and implement selected recommendations from the vulnerability assessment report. Specifically, to address extreme heat risks of selected vulnerable populations in the region. 

The Building Disaster Resilience Across Canadian Business Supply Chains project aims to develop and test tools that help Canadian businesses invest in climate adaptation. The focus is on strengthening supply systems—not only at the company level, but also at critical points throughout the broader supply chain. 

The project is focused on defining a future system using hydrogen to complement current clean technologies and integrate different sectors in Canadian municipalities for the net-zero transition, and quantifying the associated economic and environmental benefits and risks.

The project will develop a decision-support framework for direct air capture (DAC) that acknowledges the scale of the enterprise, the immersive nature of the system with other systems, and the substantial amount of uncertainty surrounding its deployment. The researchers use a dynamic adaptive policy pathways approach, a method developed to address decision making under deep uncertainty, to generate a set of policy actions and contingency plans to navigate the development and deployment of DAC in Canada.

The project aims to improve methane emission monitoring at landfills by combining state-of-the-art soil measurements with a novel application of hyperspectral infrared imaging. The team will also develop methods to reduce emissions using methane-consuming microbes from landfill cover soils. This project targets the large, poorly quantified emissions from Canadian landfills and provides information, tools, and methods for practical solutions.

This project focuses on the development of water and climate smart agricultural solutions in complex working landscapes using big data, remote sensing, modelling and stakeholder engagement. The project is dedicated to reimagining the very fabric of our landscapes, integrating nature-based climate solutions with cutting-edge technologies to create a harmonious balance between food production, energy systems, and water resource.

The project supports Canadian municipalities to monitor, measure and achieve their greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation goals. The aim is to ensure emissions reduction projects, policies and programs are aligned with Canada's national reduction commitments.

The research will develop a simple, dynamic carbon and GHG scorecard that will complement existing green building standards by tracking the state and trajectory of residential developments. The scorecard’s potential to induce developer behavioral change by incentivizing green infrastructure investments through social norms and status-seeking behaviour will be tested.

The Can-Peat project will quantify the potential of peatland management in Canada to contribute to climate change mitigation as a nature-based solution. This goal will be achieved by creating an open access database of peatland distribution, condition and vulnerability, innovative modelling response to disturbance, and developing decision-support tools for climate friendly management.