Flood Hazard Mapping Data and Its Importance: Jurisdictional Complexity, Innovation in Data Dissemination, and Advancing Adaptation

Flooding is Canada’s most costly natural disaster, and flood risk intensifies as a result of urbanization and climate change. These impacts will change over time and can jeopardize the overall sustainability of communities if they remain unaddressed. As socio-economic consequences worsen, it underlines the need for governments to provide current and accurate hazard information to vulnerable populations, including Indigenous communities who are disproportionately affected, to make decisions that will enhance climate adaptation. Targeted investments in activities to build flood hazard data will improve the resources available to Canadians and their ability to adapt and recover following these events. Flood maps are used throughout the emergency management lifecycle to prepare for, respond to and mitigate the impacts of flood events.  Currently, Canada lacks accurate, complete, and current flood hazard information at a national level.  

Under the Federal Hazard Identification and Mapping Program (FHIMP), Natural Resources Canada collaborates with provinces and territories to create and disseminate engineering-level flood hazard maps. Given that many Canadians are unaware of flood hazards, the FHIMP is working to fill gaps in knowledge for areas where data is either outdated or not complete. To increase the accessibility of these maps, NRCan has recently established an online flood mapping data hub. The flood mapping data hub is purpose built as a centralized repository for standardized, high quality flood hazard data that can help inform technical analyses, engineering applications, and local land-use planning and climate mitigation.

The presentation will provide an overview of FHIMP’s comprehensive approach to flood hazard data, covering acquisition and mapping projects, open data dissemination platforms, and the policy implications and engagement required to convey this data in Canada – where jurisdictional authority for flood risk management largely lies with provinces and territories. We will also provide a gap analysis of current flood hazard data/information availability along with best practices to inform next steps.  

In addition, we will show how these data will inform cutting-edge geospatial innovation, including work on a new regional flood hazard models that leverage the Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation’s (CCMEO) machine learning and AI expertise to create value-added geospatial products and analysis for all Canadians. The lessons learned from FHIMP will inform other interjurisdictional projects that involve complex data collection and dissemination projects to inform decision-making, land-use planning, and climate change adaptation.