Flood preparedness requires increased federal focus

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/11/2016 (2303 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As the federal government positions for a major infrastructure investment, it’s crucial climate resilience and rural inclusiveness be fundamental objectives. Flood preparedness is a very good place to start.

Last month, the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, based at the University of Waterloo, released a report entitled Climate Change and the Preparedness of Canadian Provinces and Yukon to Limit Potential Flood Damage. The report ranked all 10 provinces and the Yukon for their relative preparedness for major flood episodes.

The foremost point made by authors Dr. Blair Feltmate and Marina Moudrak is that flood risk is increasing because of climate change, and mitigating flood risk should be a first-order financial priority for all governments — rural municipal to federal.

The billion-dollar liability from the 2011 Manitoba flood and the PST point that got added to our tax bill as a result should be reminder enough to Manitobans of the entailed risk.

Despite our hard-won experience enduring and surviving catastrophic floods, Manitoba did not rank highest for flood preparedness. That honour was bestowed upon Ontario, which, according to Feltmate and Moudrak, scored a B- grade. It was assessed on the basis of 12 criteria, including flood-plain mapping, land-use planning, home and commercial flood risk audits and public health and safety, among others.

Manitoba received a middle-of-the-pack C; British Columbia and Prince Edward Island lagged in last place, scoring Ds.

The authors’ recommendations target federal and provincial governments, proposing new chief adaptation officers in each province and territory to oversee flood risk-minimization as a whole-of-government priority. They recommend interprovincial co-ordination on key flood risks, the logic being that downstream cities and provinces inherit upstream problems, be they floodwaters or the economic impacts of washed-out infrastructure such as highways or railroads.

Feltmate and Moudrak also recommend the provinces, through their chief adaptation officer, prepare audited state-of-flood-preparedness reports based on the 12 categories of assessment in their report.

The recommendation with the most teeth is their assertion that development in areas known to be flood-prone be restricted, as, in their words: “It is unconscionable that developments are continuing in recognized flood zones, with limited flood mitigation controls.”

They boldly recommend federal disaster-recovery funding through the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangement (DFAA) be limited or withdrawn in cases where development took place in areas known to be at high risk.

It’s a logical proposal, but herein lies the rub: we don’t actually know the location of high-risk areas with anywhere near the accuracy we should — a serious governance concern in an era when the necessary analytics are readily available. Moreover, the use of heavy leverage through the threat of DFAA retraction should be accompanied by federal responsibility to assert leadership on flood-risk analysis.

A deeper read of the Waterloo report reveals the more fundamental problem: flood-risk assessment in this country is a disjointed enterprise at best. Provinces variously and inconsistently use one-in-30-, one-in-100-, one-in-200-, and in some cases one-in-500-year flood events for different categories of land-use planning and infrastructure design — again, a serious problem for consistent application of DFAA.

The Office of the Auditor General pointed out very similar issues in a spring 2016 report, Mitigating the Effects of Severe Weather, which examined federal responsibilities.

The office recommended the federal government, through the department of Environment and Climate Change, produce extreme precipitation analyses with climate-change effects as well as modern flood-hazard assessment guidelines.

The department does not have to do the heavy lifting alone; a constellation of regional assets, such as the Prairie Climate Centre, will provide expertise and analyses, but we do need leadership.

Perhaps the most glaring flood-hazard assessment issue is the systematic under-utilization of big data analytics, particularly high-resolution topographic data, known as LiDAR, for pinpointing high-risk areas. Feltmate and Moudrak comment favourably on provinces using LiDAR, but these examples were few and not province-wide — the reason is cost, and it’s penny-wise, pound-foolish thinking needing federal leadership.

LiDAR, which measures elevations precisely and is essential to modern flood-zone mapping, used to be expensive. Like most big data, LiDAR costs have plummeted when acquired at scale, yet it’s still relatively expensive for individual rural municipalities. Its piecemeal availability bottlenecks local flood-zone mapping and confounds attempts at regional-scale analysis where the most costly risks aggregate and imperil urban infrastructure — Winnipeg’s vulnerability to Assiniboine River flooding, shown in 2011, is a textbook example.

A national, seamless LiDAR acquisition project would cost the federal government less than $400 million; complete coverage south of the 60th parallel would be half this much and would usher in a new era of high-resolution risk analysis and investment planning. American states that have completed comprehensive LiDAR projects report benefit-cost ratios above three, primarily through more efficient flood protection. In an era in which we plan to pour billions upon billions into infrastructure, enabling high-value rural investment that can be bundled to take downstream urban infrastructure risk off the table is a public policy no-brainer.

A national LiDAR project would also re-establish Canada, the birthplace of the technology (as well as RadarSat and Geographic Information Systems), as the global leader in geospatial analysis. The project is, however, much more than a technical exercise; it’s the modern expression of sovereignty over this landmass.

In 1936, then prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King remarked, “If some countries have too much history, we have too much geography”; that problem re-emerges as existential with climate change and our vast infrastructure needs, but it is solvable with smart investment.

Hank Venema is director of planning at the Prairie Climate Centre.