10 Years of Impact

In 2012, Partners for Action (P4A) was initiated by Co-operators to address critical gaps in coordinated leadership, adaptation research, and applied solutions to prepare Canadian communities for extreme weather impacts

Our 2013 work asked insurers and other stakeholders about their priorities for advancing flood resiliency in Canada, as well as assessing the viability of overland flood insurance. We identified two key recommendations: 

1. 1) Begin a discussion on the actions necessary to improve flood and disaster risk management 

2. 2) Conduct research on flood risk exposure across Canada. 

In 2014 interviews, stakeholders identified three winning conditions that would help reduce the risk of flood: 

1. 1) Canadians must understand the risk that flooding presents to their homes, businesses and communities 

2. 2) Canadian decision makers must use their understanding of flood risk to make sound adaptation decisions 

3. 3) Canadians must have options to transfer flood risks that remain after they have put adaptation strategies into place 

Partners for Action (P4A) is founded as a research initiative within the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo with thought-leadership and funding from co-founders, the Co-operators and Farm Mutual Reinsurance begin a decade’s long partnership as co-founders and funding partners. 

“I am thrilled to be joining Environment at Waterloo as director of Partners for Action,” said Peddle. “The Co-operators and Farm Mutual Reinsurance Plan recognize the critical importance of risk proofing our communities in the face of climate change. Drawing on the applied research specialties of Environment, we’ll come up with collaborative solutions to address an important unmet need in our communities – our lack of resiliency when it comes to flooding.”

FloodSmartCanada.ca is now a leading platform for flood risk awareness and preparedness materials and flood resiliency research. Its aim is to empower Canadians to take action to prepare for flooding by providing a hub of information and resources on floods, flood risks, and emergency preparedness. The information on this site is intended to educate homeowners, renters, practitioners, businesses, municipalities, and other organizations about floods.

P4A releases findings on its assessment of flood readiness within 18 Ontario municipalities, 2 First Nation communities, and 15 Conservation Authorities in its report, "At the Front Lines of Flood."

P4A hosts two workshops at CatIQ Connect 2017, identifying priority areas related to improving data and shared understandings, homeowner education and awareness, and proactive cross-sector collaboration. Findings are shared in the report, "Perspectives in Flood Risk Assessment and Management."

P4A interviewed homeowners living in flood risk areas and reports findings that 94% of Canadians are unaware of their flood risks:

• Canadian Voices on Changing Flood Risk: Findings from a National Survey

National Resources Canada engages P4A to produce two reports on the role of flood maps in community engagement and raising risk awareness as part of the Federal Floodplain Mapping Guideline Series:

• Engaging Community Members in the Floodplain Mapping Process
• The Role of Flood Maps in Raising Flood Risk Awareness in Communities

P4A develops a set of best practices for flood risk communications with the goal of promoting personal preparedness:

• A Community Guide to Flood Risk Communication

P4A partners with the Canadian Red Cross to develop a collaborative awareness-to-action project involving the City of Windsor and Dufferin County, releasing the report: 

• Flood Risk Reduction in Canada: The Road to Becoming a Trusted Source for Preparedness Information

Reep Green Solutions and Partners for Action release a guide on how to communities on lot-level stormwater management issue:

• RAIN Smart Framework for Municipalities 

P4A launches its FloodSmart Toolkit with funding from Public Safety Canada’s National Disaster Mitigation Program, working to advance flood resiliency through a nationwide communication and education campaign. 

Anna Ziolecki becomes P4A’s new Director, while Dr. Jason Thistlethwaite officially joins P4A as Associate Director 

Through Public Safety Canada’s National Disaster Mitigation Program, P4A continues to educate Canadians about their flood risks and promote flood preparedness actions at the household level, producing two reports:

• Awareness to Action: Effectively Communicating Flood Risk to Canadians
• Communicating to Increase Flood Awareness and Incite Action Among Canadians  

P4A partners with Canadian Geographic and the Royal Canadian Geographic Society to develop flood risk awareness-to-action materials for grades 5-12, which are promoted nationally to over 20,000 educators:

• Flooding in Canada: Educational Resources on Flooding

P4A hosts a whole-of-society workshop on flood risk communications, reporting its findings in the report:

• Communicating Flood Risk to Canadians: Understanding the Challenges and Developing Best Practices  

Julie Wright joins P4A as its third director, overseeing strategic projects and partnerships

P4A’s second national survey captures the perspectives of 2,500 Canadians living in flood risk areas:

• Canadian Voices on Flood Risk 2020: Findings from a National Survey About How We Should Manage an Increasingly Costly and Common Peril  

P4A partners with Windfall Ecology Centre and Possibilian Ventures to produce the policy paper, also available in French:

• Just Green Cities: Integrating the SDGs into Municipal Infrastructure Decision Making 

P4A concludes a multi-year Max Bell Foundation funded project which assessed the effectiveness property-buyout programs through three metrics: cost efficiency, social acceptability, and political feasibility. The study applied its framework to three Canadian case study communities: Gatineau, Quebec; Grand Forks, British Columbia; and High River, Alberta. In Spring 2022, P4A hosted a webinar with community experts, researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers, and launched its report, also available in French:

• Buying out the Floodplain: Recommendations for Strategic Relocation Programs in Canada

P4A concludes the first phase of research on the Driving Risk Awareness to Action and Building Resiliency for Vulnerable Canadians in High-Risk Areas (Inclusive Resilience) project, in partnership with the Canadian Red Cross and funded by Public Safety Canada.  

P4A reports its findings on how to deliver inclusive risk communications among at-risk populations in the report, also available in French:

• Inclusive Resilience: Pathways to Building Awareness and Preparedness Among At-Risk Populations in Canada

P4A provides grant-writing and project management support to New Frontiers in Research Fund-Exploration project, Water is Our Friend, on the use amphibious architecture as a method of adapting in place led by Principal Investigator Dr. Elizabeth English 

Sharmalene Mendis-Millard begins her tenure as P4A's fourth and final Director, having held the prior role of Senior Manager, Research Evaluations and Partnerships

Halifax Regional Municipality engages P4A to conduct research on resilient retrofits for floods, extreme precipitation, extreme winds, wildfires, drought, snow, and ice. P4A develops a framework for multi-hazard retrofits that considers building typology, enabling initiatives, and adaptive measures in support of Halifax’s climate action planning initiative, HalifACT 

P4A’s Climate Equity and Risk Analysis (CERA) team provides in-kind supports for Reep Green Solutions, helping them to develop methods of assessing equity indicators within their community programming. 

• Read the report: Mapping Communities for Inclusive Impact

The CERA team provides in-kind support in mapping flood susceptibility exposure for 15 Canadian communities for the HealthyPlan.City platform as part of the Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium and HealthyDesign.City Initiative project, funded by Green Communities Canada. 

• Visit the website: https://healthyplan.city/

P4A partners with York University, CIFAL York, Smart Waterloo Region, TRANSFORM, and the Waterloo Climate Institute to facilitate a serious role-playing game on flood risk management. P4A worked with the FRC team, led by Dr. Evalyna Bogdan, to recruit and train student facilitators, equipping them with the skills needed to facilitate interactive workshops, including an event hosted with local business owners in Cambridge’s Galt District in November 2023. 

• Learn more about the FRC Game: frcgame.com
• Visit the Flood Resilience Challenge Cambridge StoryMap

P4A enters a multi-year partnership with Understanding Risk BC (now called the BC Climate Resilience Summit), supporting the delivery of the 2023 and 2025 convenings via event sponsorship, the organization committee, and speaker roles, as well as providing in-kind support for longer-term knowledge mobilization 

P4A partners with Climate Caucus to deliver a four-part webinar series on local climate resiliency intended for municipal government staff and officials

P4A begins a multi-year partnership with the Lower Fraser Floodplains Coalition to support their webinar series, Designing for Flood Resilience, and ongoing efforts to bridge regional flood governance gaps in BC’s Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley regions 

P4A concludes the second phase of its Inclusive Resilience project work with the Canadian Red Cross, developing new methodologies for equity-informed risk assessments and mapping using a social vulnerability index. P4A launches the report, also available in French:

• Inclusive Resilience: A Socio-Economic Vulnerability Index to Map Flood Risk for Targeted Communications and Disaster Risk Reduction 

With seed funding from the Waterloo Climate Institute and Water Institute, P4A supports UW faculty in the development of the successful international research grant, jointly funded by the New Frontiers in Research Fund-International / National Science Foundation. In 2024, the Retreating from Risk project, led by Principal Investigator Dr. Brent Doberstein, officially launched with P4A providing in-kind support via the project secretariat and organizing a hybrid 3-day research design workshop with institutional and community partners from Canada, the United States, and Indonesia 

P4A launches ClimateResilientRetrofits.ca, Canada’s first resource hub for adapting homes and buildings to a changing climate 

National Research Council of Canada engages P4A to further develop and refine its Multi-Hazard Resilient Retrofits Database with funding provided by NRC’s Climate Resilient Built Environment Initiative.

This comprehensive database of multi-hazard resilient retrofits displays adaptation measures for floods/extreme precipitation, heat, wildfire, wind, and snow/ice. Information about each measure has been categorized into fields such as the ‘adaptation objective,’ the ‘problem’ the hazard poses to the building, and the type of measure. The database also provides a “rating” to each measure for the attributes of relative cost, time and effort required, expertise needed, degree of invasiveness, which measures conflict or work well together, and which measures increase energy efficiency and/or decrease greenhouse gas emissions for climate mitigation.

In partnership with Co-operators, P4A develops web-based maps and decision-support tools for assessing social vulnerability and flood risk through the multi-year sponsored research project, concluding its multi-year project: Data For Flood Resilience: Building Evidence for Equity-Informed Investment, Planning, and Foresight 

P4A releases a plain language guidebook in partnership with Clean Foundation as part of their Resilient Home Retrofits pilot project:

• Flood Resilient Residential Retrofits Handbook

P4A partners with Tamarack Institute and Climate Caucus to launch the Adaptive and Resilient Communities Cohort, a peer learning network that aims to advance local climate adaptation and resilience projects 

P4A partners with ICLEI Canada to refine and add to the June 2025 Climate Insight release of infrastructure options for climate-resilient housing 

As part of the Federal Flood Mapping Guideline Series, Natural Resources Canada engages P4A to produce guidelines for integrating the Federal Flood Mapping Process Framework with best practices for community engagement:

• Engaging Community Members in the Flood Mapping Process  

The University of Waterloo awards the Co-operators and Farm Mutual Re with the Friends of the Faculty Award for their invaluable contributions to empowering research and innovation within the Faculty of the Environment

To learn more about Partners for Action's work, legacy, and final chapter as community-engaged research initiative within the University of Waterloo's Faculty of Environment, read this Waterloo News article