Building for climate change
Exploring data-driven municipal adaptation
CLIMATE ADAPTATION
This article summarizes key insights from a recent webinar exploring how climate data can inform and support municipal adaptation initiatives. An expert panel discussed what climate data is and shared their experiences in applying it to municipal adaptation initiatives, showing us how municipalities are uniquely positioned to use data to respond to the changing climate and strengthen their adaptation efforts.
Building municipal infrastructure and other assets used to be reasonably straightforward. Local governments relied on sound methods and materials, followed building codes, allowing communities to enjoy the fruits of these labours for years to come.
Now, if municipalities want to build physical assets that withstand future climate impacts, they will have to do more. Traditional building codes are based on historical climate values, when weather patterns were cyclical and somewhat predictable. That doesn’t reflect today’s reality.
“There are building zones emerging in the southern parts of the country with climates that haven't necessarily even existed in Canada in the past,” says Casey Clunas, a policy analyst at Environment and Climate Change Canada.
If we want to build for a changing climate, we need to use new tools.
Which climate data tools should you use?
Clunas works with the department’s Canadian Centre for Climate Change Services. She says municipalities make up a large portion of the centre’s users, because they manage so many of the things that are most impacted by climate change.
The centre offers guidance, training and resources that help users understand and use climate data for decision-making around adaptation. One of those tools is ClimateData.ca, a portal with high-level, high-resolution climate data for the whole country.
The centre is just one source that municipalities can turn to for climate data. While Clunas recognizes that over saturation of quality climate data resources online can lead to overwhelm, she suggests a slight reframe of this challenge: “it highlights the fact that you have many options.”
Sara MacRae, manager of climate and energy for the County of Dufferin (about an hour north of Toronto), and her team worked with ICLEI Canada’s Advancing Adaptation Program to develop the county’s adaptation strategy and action plan. They used the BARC (Building Adaptive and Resilient Communities) framework, a five-step planning tool designed to help local governments prepare for climate change impacts by evaluating how likely a set of climate events are to happen and the potential consequences if they do.
We use data-driven tools in conjunction with more qualitative and narrative-based methods of learning about how our communities experience the impacts of climate change - Jillian Prosser, City of Calgary
Dufferin County used climate data and modelling in tandem with local expertise and experience. “And wherever possible, we employed an ensemble approach,” says MacRae. This means running multiple climate models simultaneously, which can provide a more accurate projection than using a single model for things like future, annual, and seasonal temperatures and precipitation.
Similarly, the City of Calgary used about 40 different indices to build its Community Climate Risk Index. Jillian Prosser, who led the city’s Climate Adaptation Team at the time of the webinar, says this tool helps the city to understand its top climate hazards and how they could affect its most vulnerable people, communities, locations and assets so the city can respond accordingly.
Calgary also uses climate data alongside other, complementary methods.
“We use data-driven tools in conjunction with more qualitative and narrative-based methods of learning about how our communities experience the impacts of climate change,” says Prosser.
This work includes organizing community working groups and engaging with people to understand they’re impacted and how they feel they could be better supported in a changing climate.
Using climate data to design with co-benefits in mind
Their complementary approaches have helped both municipalities prioritize adaptation projects that centre on social equity. High on the list for both was building community resilience hubs.
MacRae says the county’s resilience hub pilot project reflects its goal to strengthen social infrastructure to better manage climate-related health and safety risks for residents by improving community connectivity.
In “everyday mode” the hub would serve as a multifunctional community space. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, it will be this,” MacRae says. “It could offer bookable space event areas, a bike repair station and basic first aid supplies, for instance.”
When a crisis hits, the hub would shift into “disruption mode.” It could become a family meeting spot, a place to distribute emergency supplies, a place to communicate critical information and more.
Finally, during “recovery mode,” the hub would continue to support the community by offering mental health programming, community services and resource distribution to help people recover and rebuild after a disruption.
The building design itself will also be shaped by climate data, as Dufferin County is expected to experience prolonged periods of extreme heat. MacRae says they’ll look at incorporating features like shaded areas, drinking water access and misting stations.
Meanwhile, the City of Calgary prioritized building a community resilience hub in its Sunalta neighbourhood.
“We started to understand which components of vulnerability are key to addressing climate risk in this community,” Prosser says. In Sunalta that vulnerability translates to a high percentage of racialized people, unemployment, recent immigrants and land covered with paved surfaces.
The hub will be a purpose-built facility with a commercial kitchen, café and programming spaces. It will function as a social enterprise, which means the income it generates will go back into the community.
Prosser describes how climate data guided the building design, with the hub’s heating and cooling systems geared to meet future demands. This climate-ready approach includes modifications to the building envelope, energy system, roofing and exterior modifications. Greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation measures were also embedded in the design.
“Rather than creating this hub for climate that we no longer have, it’s being built for the climate that we’re inheriting,” she says.
Featured tools and resources:
Case study: Climate adaptation through an equity lens
City of Calgary, Community Climate Risk Index (English only)
Climate data for a resilient Canada
ICLEI Canada, Building adaptive and resilient communities
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