On February 1, 2023, our adaptation and resilience consultant Ernesto Rodriguez-Sanchez participated in the “5th Workshop on Floodplain Mapping, Flooding and Resilience: Issues and Opportunities” organized by the Quebec Chapter of the Canadian Water Resources Association (CWRA).
This training is part of the Civil Protection Strategy for Canada: Towards a Resilient 2030. The Quebec government’s efforts, implemented by the Ministère de l’Environnement et de la Lutte contre les changements climatiques, de la Faune et des Parcs (MELCCFP), are helping to advance knowledge on the integration of land vulnerability, flood zone mapping and land use planning.
The following key points emerged from the training:
- In Quebec, the effects of climate change are already affecting river and lake regimes and causing many complications for city and village managers. The impacts of flooding and the vulnerabilities of the territory represent the greatest challenges in civil security for municipalities. Consequently, they must take responsibility by putting forward flood risk management and by equipping themselves to better understand their territory, their vulnerability and to evaluate their level of resilience. To date, several resilient development and residential diagnostic projects have been field tested (e.g., ARIACTION), which demonstrate the issues of communication, education and risk perception of the population. These represent issues for successful and effective adaptation to climate change.
- The adoption of the transitional regime for the management of flood-prone areas, riverbanks and coastlines, in effect since March 2022, represents a major challenge for municipalities, not only in terms of regulatory application in urban and sustainable development, but also in terms of governance and accountability.
- New tool developments allow for better knowledge of flood risks, such as INFO-CREW (MELCCFP), the VIGILANCE1 platform (MSP) or PAVICS-HYDRO, and allow for the democratization of access to information in all sectors of society and encourage informed decision making.
- The implementation of green infrastructure projects and technologically innovative approaches in several cities and municipalities in Quebec (including the Municipality of Victoriaville, the Communauté Métropolitaine de Montréal, the City of Montreal, and the Communauté Métropolitaine de Québec) is reducing vulnerabilities to flooding and improving municipal adaptive capacities for disaster response.
