Flood Mitigation & Community Resilience

Jasmin Boisvert is a Water Resource Specialist with the Department of Environment and Local Government’s Hydrology Centre. Jasmin primarily works on New Brunwsick’s flood hazard mapping initiatives, as well as updating the province’s flood modelling tools and providing advice and expertise related to water resources for a variety of other initiatives and projects in the province. 

In this webinar, Jasmin speaks on the province’s unique geography and the various types of flooding that this creates. He also discusses the costs associated with flooding, how the province’s Flood History Database is used, and expands on the flooding events that occurred in NB in 2018 and 2019.

Brittany MacLean worked with the City of Fredericton as the Corporate and Environmental Performance Officer. Brittany is no longer with the the City of Fredericton, but had been with the city for three years, starting the role of the Environmental Coordinator. Through this position, she led the development of the City’s Climate Change Adaptation Plan. 

In this webinar, Brittany discusses the recent increase in flooding events in Fredericton and how the City has adapted its flooding response. She also speaks on future expectations around flooding in the Fredericton region, and how the Climate Change Adaptation Plan, Disaster Management and Adaptation Fund, and broad partnerships will help the City address flooding in the future.

Cheryl Evans is the Director of the Home Flood Protection at the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo. She served as a technical committee member on CSA’s Guideline on Basement Flood Protection and Risk Reduction (CSA Z800) and was also a lead curriculum developer for the Ontario College’s Flood Risk Assessment Training Program. 

Joanna Eyquem is a Professional Geoscientist, Chartered Water and Environmental Manager and Chartered Environmentalist. Prior to joining the Intact Centre, she was the National Climate Change Lead at AECOM Canada and previously held roles at Parish Geomorphic LTD (now Matrix Solutions), Royal Haskoning DHV and Jacobs Engineering. 

In this webinar, Cheryl and Joanna give an overview of actions to reduce flood risk. The actions range from individual building maintenance and retrofits to watershed approaches that work with nature.

Simon J. Mitchell is the Vice President of Resilient Habitats of WWF-Canada. Megan de Graaf is the Acadian Forest Program Director for Community Forests International. Simon and Megan present jointly in this webinar on their natural infrastructure projects along the Wolastoq River.

In this webinar, Simon speaks about the role that natural infrastructure plays in flood mitigation in New Brunswick and what this looks like in a municipal context. Megan presents a similar analysis of forest property, modelled to arrive at an estimated value of water retention. This forest property analysis is compared to the construction of a holding pond with similar water-retention capacities, showing the effectiveness of forests in flood mitigation.