Interview: The Crucial Role of Geospatial Data and AI in Building a National Flood Strategy for Canada

Canada has faced a surge of extreme weather events in recent years, with devastating floods impacting communities nationwide. These events have highlighted the urgent need for comprehensive flood management and climate adaptation strategies. Joanna Eyquem, Managing Director of Climate-Resilient Infrastructure at the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo, is a leading voice in the effort to enhance Canada’s flood resilience. With extensive expertise in environmental sustainability and geospatial intelligence, Joanna has been instrumental in developing strategies that blend cutting-edge data analysis with natural solutions to mitigate the impacts of climate change. In this interview, she emphasizes the need for a cohesive national flood strategy, and advocates for smarter investments in flood mitigation infrastructure. Joanna also stresses the importance of community engagement and political action in addressing Canada’s growing vulnerability to extreme weather events.

How do you see the role of geospatial data and intelligence in enhancing flood resilience across Canada? 

There is a need for more strategic action to tackle flood risk, and geospatial data and artificial intelligence are tools that can help Canada develop a more focused national flood strategy. Canada has not yet grasped the power of data to drive national priorities and hasn’t yet developed a National Flood Risk Management Strategy. National public flood mapping has only recently been commissioned in Canada, whereas other countries have had this information for years – for example, the UK has had public national flood mapping since 1999 and the US since 2020. Once we can identify where major flood hazards overlap with infrastructure and homes, we can start assessing national flood management priorities, designing solutions, and targeting funding.

Key geospatial data doesn’t only relate to the hazard itself. Datasets such as the extent of impervious surfaces, locations of socio-economically vulnerable populations, critical infrastructure, and the extent of natural habitats like wetlands, are all pieces of the puzzle, particularly in assessing how well adapted we are or are not. All of these “layers” help us understand where river and coastal floodplains naturally occur, where human intervention is causing flooding or making it worse, notably surface water ponding, and where people and infrastructure is at risk. Innovations include using machine learning to automate analysis of aerial imagery to determine the extent of roofs and pavements. I have seen this used to understand flood risk in Houston, TX for example, where surface water flooding is a key problem.

Could you provide an overview of the key milestones achieved by the Flood Hazard Identification and Mapping Program (FHIMP) since its inception in 2021, particularly in terms of data acquisition, flood hazard modelling and map dissemination?

Canada has been investing in engineering flood mapping for a long time, for example, through the National Disaster Mitigation Program (NDMP) 2015-2020. The problem to date has been that the locations mapped have depended on the funding applications received. What has resulted is a patchwork of flood mapping, with the products hosted by many different organizations that vary depending on which province you live in. For example, in Ontario the Conservation Authorities hold the flood maps; in New Brunswick, it’s the province; and in Quebec, it’s the municipalities.

The Flood Hazard Identification and Mapping Program (FHIMP) aims to complete flood hazard maps of higher-risk areas in Canada and make this flood hazard information accessible. However, “accessible maps” also need to be easy to find based on postcode, easy to use and understandable to the public. This is the key challenge that we haven’t yet cracked.

The recent flooding events have highlighted the vulnerability of urban areas to extreme weather events. What specific measures are being taken to address urban flood risks in major Canadian cities like Toronto?

Flood risk management requires communities to identify the hazard (including intense rainfall, river and coastal flooding), assess the potential consequences and put in place measures to reduce the risk. The Municipal Flood Risk Check-Up is a free tool that the Intact Centre has developed to identify key practices to manage flood risk, from empowering homeowners to make their own homes more flood resilience to working with nature-based solutions to reduce flooding at the watershed-scale.

Overall, there has been a trend away from thinking we can engineer our way out of flood risk with bigger pipes and flood control structures, towards approaches that work with nature – such as Toronto’s River Don Mouth Naturalization project and Montreal’s investment in resilient “sponge” parks. However, relocation from high-risk flood zones remains largely reactive, such as in Pointe Gatineau, meaning homes are not rebuilt following flood damage, rather than planning their retreat before a disaster.

You’ve emphasized the need for political action on adaptation. What role should policymakers play in leveraging some of the advanced tools and solutions for flood management?

We need greater and smarter investment in adaptation. Many focus on investments in terms of dollar amounts, but we also need to ensure that the money being spent is bringing the most benefit in the long-term. It would be very easy to spend billions of dollars on flood control structures, like bigger pumps and dikes, but ongoing maintenance costs, the societal value of what is being protected, and co-benefits also need to factor into decision-making.

If we want long-term solutions to reduce flood risk, we need to fund projects that see beyond political election timeframes. Other countries have already developed robust ways to support decisions based on costs and benefits over a 100-year time frame. For example, the UK’s Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management project appraisal guidance details how financial, social and environmental costs and benefits can be appraised in dollar terms considering a full range of options, to justify a preferred path forward.

In your experience, how can we engage communities in flood preparedness and resilience efforts?

While it is important that residents understand how flood risks may affect them, it is perhaps even more important that they understand the measures they can take to reduce flood risks, many of which are at little cost. The Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation has developed infographics that set out exactly what residents can do around their own homes. Organizations, like BMO, the City of Calgary, the City of Ottawa, and the Canadian Red Cross are already sharing this information with their clients, residents and through door-to-door campaigns in vulnerable communities. This information empowers people to take action, which can also help reduce anxiety around climate risks.

Flood risk management in Canada involves multiple jurisdictions, including federal, provincial, and territorial governments. How do you think these complexities can be best navigated?

Flood risk governance is a key challenge for Canada. It is the provinces and territories that mainly have jurisdiction over flood risk management and connected activities, like land use management, and each takes a different approach.

The National Adaptation Strategy (NAS) aims to provide common targets, which include several relating to flood risk, such as:

• By 2025, 60% of Canadians, including northerners and Indigenous Peoples, are aware of the disaster risks facing their households.
• By 2025, 50% of Canadians have taken concrete actions to better prepare for and respond to climate change risks facing their household.
• By 2028, the federal government, provinces, and territories have worked collaboratively to prioritize at least 200 higher-risk flood areas for new flood hazard maps / regional level modelling, and have taken evidence-based risk mitigation actions in accordance with scientific guidance.
• By 2030, 80% of public and municipal organizations have factored climate change adaptation into their decision-making processes.

It is not clear what practical measures each of the provinces and territories are taking to meet the NAS targets. We are still waiting for the public flood risk portal that was promised in the 2021 mandate letters as a tool to make flood mapping useable.

Practically, flood risk management typically gets delivered at a local level, which is why $530 million in funding under the NAS has been provided to support municipalities via FCM’s Local Leadership for Climate Adaptation. This is invaluable as small and medium-sized municipalities may not have the resources, or the fundamental understanding of flood risk required to develop funding applications for programs like the FHIMP or to plan and design shovel-ready projects for the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund (DMAF).

What future technology trends do you foresee in building disaster-resilient infrastructure? How should Canada prepare to adapt to these advancements while addressing the growing threat of climate-induced flooding?

While many may think of “technology” as new construction materials, electronic devices or more sophisticated built infrastructure to better control flooding, technology for me speaks to how we can use geospatial data, AI and improved financial analysis and reporting to better understand how natural and human-built systems work together to manage flood risk, and the combined value of services provided to people.

There is a growing trend to harness the flood risk management services provided by natural assets, like wetlands, forests and natural floodplain storage. Understanding the financial value of these services is currently feeding into the compilation of Canada’s evolving natural capital accounts as part of the Census of Environment, starting with saltmarshes. At the local level, over 150 local governments have also started work on natural asset management, identifying, assessing, valuing and managing. Canada needs to take advantage of nature and climate-related datasets and innovative analysis and accounting methods to help the public sector value what really underpins our wellbeing. This will help us make decisions that not only reduce flood risk, but also achieve the best returns (in terms of financial, natural and human capital), for our infrastructure investments.