A Way Forward for Risk Assessment Tools in Canada

August 2017 Update: Natural Resources Canada has recently made this document publicly available here.

In the wake of the Alberta and Ontario floods of 2013, the federal government established the National Disaster Mitigation Program (NDMP) in April 2015.  The program has several priorities including providing support to provinces to identify, assess, plan for and mitigate high-risk flood areas and to collect disaster risk information.  Similar objectives are found in the National Scale Geohazard Risk (NSGR) Project and the United Nations post-2015 Hyogo Framework for Action Agreement (Sendai Framework), to which the government of Canada is a signatory.

Ebbwater Consulting was retained in early 2016 by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) to review and assess the existing risk management tools supported by NRCan (the owners of the NSGR project), and to provide a strategic plan to ensure that risk assessment tools are available to meet the mandate of the NDMP, the NSGR and the Sendai Priorities; providing the federal government with a Way Forward for Risk Assessment Tools in Canada.

This project involved first speaking to professionals from across the country about their needs with regards to risk assessment tools using a semi-structured interview format.  It also involved primary research into available tools for natural hazard risk assessment from around the world.  The reviewed tools were compared to the needs identified by the user group; this comparison provided the basis for priorities and next steps for the federal government.  For example, the image above describes the different spatial scales of risk assessment tools. The deliverable for this project was a report.