News

Throughout 2024 and now carrying forward into 2025, Partners for Action (P4A) has continued to build on the momentum gained over the past few years. P4A is especially grateful for the continued support of our founding funders, Co-operators and Farm Mutual Re, over the past decade which has helped to elevate issues to the forefront of national conversation, such as the need for accessible flood maps and insurance coverage for a changing climate, and catalyzed initiatives and knowledge sharing. 

Read about our 10-year impact, spotlighted in this Faculty of Environment's news feature, and check out our Spring 2025 newsletter for project updates, recent publications, and key resources!

In 2024, Partners for Action (P4A) wrapped up Inclusive Resilience, a multi-year research partnership that sought to increase awareness of disaster risks and promote inclusive approaches, tools, and actions that foster equitable disaster risk reduction and emergency preparedness across Canada. To achieve this objective, the Canadian Red Cross, funded by Public Safety Canada, commissioned P4A to carry out two strands of research on: public outreach and inclusive risk communications, and the spatial distribution of social vulnerability and flood exposure.

Visit our website to learn more about this work and to read our newest report, Inclusive Resilience: A socio-economic vulnerability index to map flood risk for targeted communications and disaster risk reduction.

Partners for Action (P4A) is pleased to announce that a P4A-supported research grant has been funded by the New Frontiers in Research Fund-International and National Science Foundation.

Led by principal investigator, Dr. Brent Doberstein, from the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, this multi-year, multi-disciplinary research partnership will advance research on transformative flood adaptation approaches. Institutional and community partners from across three countries–Canada, Indonesia, and the United States, will explore how strategic relocation–the purposeful relocation of homes, buildings, and assets from high-risk areas impacted by climate change–can be integrated within community planning processes.

Learn more about this transformative research partnership!

On May 17, 1974, the Grand River spilled its banks, leading to the most devastating flood event in Cambridge's history, inundating the downtown core of Galt. Today, flood preparedness and awareness remains a pressing topic for the region, with climate change leading to increasingly frequent and severe flood events. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Great Flood of '74, Partners for Action (P4A) partnered with CIFAL York, Smart Waterloo Region, TRANSFORM, and Waterloo Climate Institute to engage local business owners and community leaders in flood resilience planning, hosting the Flood Resilience Challenge (FRC) game.

Learn more about this interactive serious role-playing game, our November workshop, and Cambridge's flood history in our interactive story map. 

Read P4A's new report Buying out the Floodplain: Recommendations for Strategic Relocation in Canada.

Learn about our findings on property buyout programs in Canada and the role of managed retreat in flood adaptation.

Learn more about Partners for Action (P4A)’s research and partnerships in our 2022 Annual Report (PDF). We’ve highlighted some recent projects and new activities.

Learn more about Partners for Action (P4A)’s research and partnerships in our 2021 Annual Report (PDF). We’ve highlighted some recent projects and new activities.

Multi-year funding will help Canadians adapt to, prepare for and mitigate the significant risks of flooding.

Co-operators has renewed its multi-year funding commitment to Partners for Action (P4A), a research initiative at the University of Waterloo that focuses on empowering Canadians to become flood resilient, with a three-year commitment of $500,000 towards program delivery and research.

"People, communities and municipalities have to be empowered to enact change in the places they live, where the risks are the greatest,” says Jean Andrey, Dean, Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo. “Our continuing partnership with Co-operators supports the heart of this work and allows us to build deeper, impactful connections across Canada.”

Partners for Action (P4A) is pleased to share our research, communication, and partnership highlights with the release of our 2020 Annual Report (PDF). Read highlights of our activities from the past year and whats ahead for Partners for Action in 2021.

Read our new report to find out about Canadians' perceptions and attitudes on flood risk awareness and management. (PDF)

Read the results of P4A’s 2020 national survey on Canadians’ opinions on flood risk. Support for property buyouts is mixed and Canadians remain dangerously unaware of their own flood risk.