Assessment of Canadian floodplain mapping and supporting datasets for codes and standards

• Main Authors: Khaliq, M. N., Attar, A.
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: National Research Council of Canada. Ocean, Coastal and River Engineering 2017
• Subjects: Canada; Yukon; Prince Edward Island
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.4224/40002945; https://nrc-publications.canada.ca/eng/view/ft/?id=d79d712a-eec5-467d-9c23-aea80ebe46a7; https://nrc-publications.canada.ca/eng/view/object/?id=d79d712a-eec5-467d-9c23-aea80ebe46a7; https://nrc-publications.canada.ca/fra/voir/objet/?id=d79d712a-eec5-467d-9c23-aea80ebe46a7

The National Research Council–Construction (NRC-Construction) Portfolio was awarded the Climate Resilient Core Public Infrastructure (CR-CPI) project by the government of Canada to bring resilience into buildings and CPI against recurrent floods and projected climate change by updating national codes and standards and developing related guidelines. Public Safety of Canada’s records reveal that over the last decade, Canada has seen a notable increase in flooding, resulting in billions of dollars of damages. Therefore, the impact of floods on buildings and CPI was identified as a primary area of study within the CR-CPI project. Climate change is expected to exacerbate the severity of flooding, which in turn will worsen the impact of floods on buildings and CPI. In fact, all reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicate that storminess will intensify in the future as large amounts of precipitation over shorter periods will occur more frequently in many parts of the world. This includes Canada, where the impacts of climate change may even be more severe. As a result, the impact of climate change has also been identified as another major research area within the CR-CPI project. Protecting Canadians from natural disasters, such as floods, has been the focus of the Canadian government for the last several decades. In 1976 the federal government started a nation-wide flood protection program, the Flood Damage Reduction Program (FDRP), to protect Canadian communities and their assets from flood hazards. This program was federally administered and implemented on a cost sharing basis between the provinces/territories and the federal government. The provinces and territories entered into bilateral agreements at different times, except for Prince Edward Island and Yukon Territory, where the flooding hazards were not found to be a major concern. At the time the FDRP was ended by the federal government in 1995/96, most of the flood-prone areas and vulnerable major population centers across the country were ...