New flood-impact map shows soggy future for B.C. in next 80 years

A floodplains map suggests low-lying areas of major cities like Vancouver could become inundated with floods in the next 80 years under various climate change scenarios.

Created by engineering professor Slobodan Simonovic at Western University in Ontario, the maps are a visual distillation of almost 150,000 reference documents, including historical data on rainfall and snow-melt runoff, urbanization factors, and a range of climate projections.

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Simonovic predicts 30 per cent more of Canada’s land mass could be flooded by 2100.

The map identifies some of the most vulnerable areas which could see streets turned into rivers and homes under water in places like Richmond, Langley, and New Westminster

“The Fraser River that runs through Vancouver, B.C., at one location in that city, historical 100-year floodwaters rise to a depth of 2.07 metres (above normal, non-flood seasons). Under a scenario where climate change continues at the current rate of carbon emissions, floodwaters rise to a depth of 3.19 metres,” he said about some of the most vulnerable areas.

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The project was funded through a collaborative grant from a federal science and engineering research agency and a group representing Canadian insurers.

Simonovic says the next steps in this project are to expand the mapping to include coastal flooding; smaller grids with greater neighbourhood detail; and explore with Natural Resources Canada the possibility of hosting the results under Atlas of Canada data holdings.