City of Vancouver Coastal Flood Risk Assessment – Phase 1

The City of Vancouver has recognised that despite global mitigation efforts, climate change will impact the City’s future. Anticipated impacts include more intense and frequent wind and rain storms and sea level rise. Adaptation to these climate changes will require a mix of policy, planning and engineering responses. Prior to identifying preferred mitigation strategies, a comprehensive understanding of the consequences of sea level rise and ocean flooding is required. The City of Vancouver undertook a coastal flood risk assessment to acquire a broad base of technical, policy and planning knowledge that was be used to develop a robust and defensible approach to flood risk in Phase 2 of the prject. The City  chose to use HAZUS, a flood consequence tool, developed by US FEMA and supported by Natural Resources Canada, as the core of the risk assessment project. Ebbwater Consulting along with other consultants worked together with the City to develop the inputs for a HAZUS model, including inundation mapping and an asset inventory (critical infrastructure, development and demographic data). These data sets together with flood damage information from the HAZUS tool were used to look at the social, environmental and economic consequences of flooding under various flooding, mitigation and development scenarios.  Reporting for this project is available online on the City of Vancouver website.

Phase 2 of this project, where a structured-decision-making process was used to explore mitigation options,  has also recently been completed.