Climate Change Tools for Small Watershed Crossings
Designers and regulators are increasingly rationalizing for climate change (CC) in stream crossing designs. Accounting for CC when rationalizing design floods in small and remote watersheds is an especially difficult task, in part due to lacking historic data that can inform future projections.
While the baseline practice in forestry is “add 20% to the design flood”—which originates from a 2012 Engineers and Geoscientists British Columbia Guidance publication—professionals are now starting to use publicly available CC tools that give more localized estimates. These tools often produce answers different from each other and from the 20% guidance. Ultimately, the expert judgement of designers defines how any of these options are integrated into the larger design flood hydrology design process.
What is the webinar series about?
This webinar series focuses on resource road stream crossings and will review the application of climate change tools in a small watershed context. Attendees of these web conferences will be empowered to make more informed professional judgements about rationalizing for CC in this engineering application where there is no single right answer.
FPInnovations will begin the series by reviewing CC tools in terms of differences, limitations, and trends in the results they produce. The second webinar will be presented by Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium and will focus on their climate modelling, highlight climate projections in BC, and review their public CC tools –including the new Climate Explorer. The series will conclude with a webinar about IDF_CC, a CC tool produced by the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction that has a large user base from civil engineering firms across Canada.
This series was developed in coordination and with funding from the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development.
Who should participate?
This free webinar series is open to all. It is designed for professionals involved in the design and management of resource road infrastructure working in British Columbia. However, the issues and approaches to solutions that will be covered are also relevant to professionals across Canada.
Schedule
February 6, 10 a.m. – 11 a.m. PST
An Overview of Climate Change Tools Applied to Small Watershed Design Flood Calculations. Presented by Matt Kurowski, FPInnovations, Vancouver
February 13, 10 a.m. – 11 a.m. PST
Climate tools: What are they good for? Absolutely something… but you can’t always get what you want. Presented by Kari Tyler, Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, University of Victoria
February 27, 10 a.m. – 11 a.m. PST
Rainfall Intensity Duration Frequency Curves for Future Climate Scenarios: A Publicly Accessible Computer Tool. Presented by Dr. Simonovic, Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, Western University
For information or questions, contact Holly Park, 604-222-5654.