Related Research Resources
The following reports expand on the information available directly from the Resilient-C platform. These reports have been created by current and past members of the Resilient-C research team to address questions we feel will be of interest to Resilient-C users.
How are Coastal Communities in Canada Addressing Flooding Risk? — Findings from the Resilient-C Platform
Mauricio Carvallo Aceves & Brittney Wong
Institute for Resources, Environment and
Sustainability, UBC
As the need to mitigate coastal hazard risks increases, communities may look to their peers to learn about their experiences and the approaches being used to increase community resilience. The Resilient-C platform seeks to assist coastal communities in Canada in identifying others with similar vulnerability profiles in order to connect and learn from one another. Several trends emerge from the coastal adaptation actions recorded in the Resilient-C database. The vast majority of communities have undertaken actions to address coastal and riverine flooding, with fewer communities addressing earthquakes, tsunamis and contaminants spills. Land-use regulation actions remain the most popular action type among communities, with "accommodate" being the most popular long-term strategy, which indicates a preference to allow development to continue in areas exposed to hazards. Larger communities and those with higher income levels tend to show a wider range of action types and strategies, with a larger proportion of them undertaking damage mitigation and protection actions compared to communities with lower income levels, which appear to continue focused on gathering information through technical studies. Future research could focus on the influence of provincial governance frameworks on the implementation of actions at a municipal level, and on longitudinal studies to track the evolution of different projects over time.
Land-use Planning Actions to Increase Coastal Resilience in British Columbia
Anika Bursey
School of Community and Regional Planning, UBC
Mauricio Carvallo Aceves
Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, UBC
Increasingly frequent and severe weather events have made coastal communities in Canada consider different climate change adaptation actions and strategies in response to rising losses and associated costs. Actions related to land-use planning and regulation may offer communities a simple and effective option for restricting and managing development over time. Development Permit Areas (DPAs), a unique land-use planning mechanism in the province of British Columbia, allow communities to guide development for the specific purpose of hazard risk reduction. A set of 119 DPA actions targeting coastal and riverine flooding documented through the Resilient-C platform was reviewed to propose a topology of the approaches used by coastal communities to address hazard risk. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of DPA actions implemented across the province, with roughly half being implemented in 2018 and 2019. Overall, the most common approach used was "Specific Guidelines," such as requiring developments to preserve natural vegetation or requiring on-site stormwater management. Similar mechanisms could be implemented in other provinces looking to transition away from adaptation based on traditional grey infrastructure.
What are Coastal Communities in B.C. Doing to Build Wildfire Resilience?
Pablo Akira Beimler
School of Community and Regional Planning, UBC
With changing conditions spurred largely by climate change, heightening wildfire risk across British Columbia's coastlines is a growing challenge many coastal communities are facing. In this report, we examined the actions 53 coastal communities in B.C. have taken to adapt and build resilience to increasing wildfire risk. Overall, these communities have focused heavily on emergency preparedness and capacity building, as well as planning and land-use regulation tools. However, the types of actions and strategies taken vary between broader regions and community types. This also includes differences in the stage of implementation, with smaller communities generally further along in their implementation of actions. Overall, in recent years, there has been a shift towards a higher proportion of "protect" or "avoid" compared to "accommodate" strategies. Several case studies were also included to present examples of actions taken by different community types.
Coastal Adaptation in Quebec – Summarizing and Supplementing Resilient-C Platform Data
Mauricio Carvallo Aceves
Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, UBC
Context-specific characteristics, including organizational and institutional frameworks, lead to different planning approaches for coastal adaptation. Such differences can be seen across Canada, with provinces tailoring their approaches to their socio-economic needs, available resources, and population distributions. In the province of Quebec, identified actions targeting riverine and coastal flooding have significantly increased in recent years but are still primarily at a groundwork stage (e.g., technical studies). Local community actions seem to be heavily influenced by provincial guidelines and interventions.
The methodology adopted for the Resilient-C platform seeks to capture risk reduction and adaptation actions taken by communities from their official planning documents. We have focused our data collection on official community documents, including official community plans (OCPs), bylaws, climate adaptation plans (CAPs), and hazard-specific plans. In the province of Quebec, this approach may fail to capture actions identified outside of these official documents, such as those implemented through collaborations with other local, regional, or provincial governments (e.g., the "Baie-des-Chaleurs Participative Governance" project). Further, studies conducted by universities and grassroots groups (such as the "Sea Sentinels" program in Sainte-Flavie) often do not meet the community participation standards for Resilient-C data collection applied to other Canadian provinces.
Implementing Coastal Adaptation in Nova Scotia
David Righter & Mauricio Carvallo Aceves
Institute for Resources, Environment and
Sustainability, UBC
As the urgency of climate change mobilizes communities to develop adaptation plans, there is a need to understand the local factors influencing policy implementation. This report analyses the progress coastal communities in Nova Scotia are making towards the implementation of the climate adaptation actions identified in their provincially mandated Municipal Climate Change Adaptation Plans (MCCAPs) in Nova Scotia. The study analysed data from 20 coastal communities using surveys, statistical models and interviews to identify which actions have been initiated, the level of implementation progress, as well as the local factors influencing implementation. The results indicate nearly 75% of identified actions have been implemented to some degree since the MCCAP program was launched in 2013. Political continuity and public participation throughout the planning process were found to be significant contributors to successful implementation. Participant interviews provided further insight as to how these different factors may influence policy implementation based on local context.
Resilient-C Actions Collection Guide
This document is a companion to the Resilient Coasts Canada (Resilient-C) platform and describes how community disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation actions are collected and codeed for use by the Resilient-C platform. Described is the actions framework, categories, and codes used to describe actions taken by platform communities in official community plans, hazard-specific plans, and climate adaptation documents.