In March 2016, the City of Kenora hosted a Community Climate Change Workshop to provide an overview of the anticipated effects of climate change on Kenora and conduct a vulnerability and risk exercise to determine the City’s most pressing concerns. Three of the five impacts that ranked high related to the increased intensity of rainfall. Both internal and external stakeholders were concerned about the stress on built infrastructure caused by heavy rainfall, the increased surface runoff that could lead to erosion and landslide risk, and the reduced capacity of stormwater management that could lead to more frequent instances of flooding on private and public properties.
Participating stakeholders also perceived the community as being highly vulnerable to ecosystem-related impacts such as forest fires, increasing algal and bacteria counts, and decreasing fresh water quality. The consequences of failing to prepare for climate change were quickly becoming clear to residents of Kenora, but the solution to addressing the City’s vulnerabilities was not so clear. The City of Kenora needed to develop a holistic, enterprise-wide climate change adaptation and resilience strategy – one that would consider everything from the quality of Kenora’s roads to the security of its housing. The City of Kenora partnered with PSD Citywide.
Climate change effects and infrastructure are inextricably linked. It is intuitive to parallel the physical state of assets and degradation caused by climatic events, however, effects on structure also translates to effects on the ability to deliver services, and impacts social, economic, and environmental aspects within society.
Disruption to physical infrastructure – this could be caused by extreme weather events such as wind, ice, rain and/or snow storm(s), or more consistent weather patterns caused by climate change (i.e. sea level rise, rising temperatures, thawing permafrost, etc.) – directly impacts not only overall maintenance costs, the ability to predict necessary lifecycle events, and the integrity of the assets, but the ability to deliver consistent service levels, citizen access to basic transportation networks and health care facilities, and day-to-day economic activity. There has already been an increased frequency in extreme weather events, with the majority of affected municipalities being overwhelmingly underprepared. A large number of Canadian communities have already experienced extreme flooding, prolonged wildfire seasons, and high intensity storms. All of these events led to broader issues, felt throughout the entirety of the municipality.
In order to adequately respond to new risks and threats, municipalities must consider how they are going to allocate funding to maintain and repair infrastructure that is already in poor condition and anticipate what will need to be funded based on future climatic events. Further, they will need to define an acceptable level of service, with possible impacts from climate change in mind. This will necessitate an increase in taxes for many municipalities, as aging infrastructure will now need additional maintenance and to be made resilient to climatic events to ensure that essential services are not disrupted in the event of an extreme weather event. In addition, this may lead to a decrease in service levels that municipalities are able to provide, as the cost to maintain certain infrastructure may become too high. All of this has a run-off effect for citizens and the municipality, as it may limit access to essential services and hinder economic activity.
Kenora’s Approach; Developing an Asset Management Roadmap
With an approximate population of 15,000 people, Kenora is located in Northwestern Ontario – a two-hour drive east of Winnipeg, three hours north of the Canada-USA border, and five hours west of Thunder Bay. Known as the “premier boating destination of North America,” Kenora is a vibrant city situated on the north shore of beautiful Lake of the Woods.
Prior to engaging PSD Citywide to develop and help implement a climate change-conscious Asset Management Roadmap, the City of Kenora identified “Reducing the Infrastructure Deficit” as a key priority in The City of Kenora’s Strategic Plan: 2015 to 2020 and committed to ensuring that municipal infrastructure assets are managed and maintained using available resources through a robust Asset Management Plan and process. In doing so, the City also committed to developing a better understanding of the state of their assets, how to prioritize maintenance and repairs, and how to plan for a stable and secure future.
The objective of the climate change-conscious Asset Management Roadmap feature is to develop and implement a climate change risk assessment framework that integrates climate risks and impacts with the City of Kenora’s asset management practices. Goals of the project include:
- Implementing a climate change risk assessment framework that aligns with the City’s Enterprise Risk Management Framework. This also requires an expansion of the City’s AMP risk methodology to determine the vulnerability and resiliency of city infrastructure imminently threatened by climate change;
- Obtaining data that provides a better understanding of how both individual assets and entire asset classes will be impacted by the effects of climate change, and using that data to inform strategic decision-making related to asset management practices;
- Producing risk matrices across each asset class that classify the level of risk for individual assets to the impacts of climate change; and,
- Develop a capital prioritization policy based, in part, on the results of the above tasks.
Re-evaluating Risk
Risk impacts every stage of the asset management decision-making process, from establishing organizational objectives to improving planning operations and service delivery. One of the central features of this project is the development of a risk equation that properly factors in the impacts of climate change on any given municipality. How does a municipality’s geographic location factor in to the risks it may or may not face because of climate change? What is the threshold level of pressure individual assets can withstand? How does a municipality take into consideration climate change-related events that have yet to be experienced? How can a municipality better predict and prepare for the impacts of climate change it will inevitably experience? The creation of a climate change risk assessment framework produced by PSD Citywide will support risk-based decision-making that more accurately quantifies the impact that climate change will have on the ability of the City’s assets to meet service and performance needs.
The industry standard asset risk equation used by most municipalities to date (risk = probability of failure X consequence of failure) is in need of modification to integrate climate change-related risks. The equation must incorporate the following four factors:
- Exposure: The exposure of an asset to the impacts of climate change and spin-off events;
- Vulnerability: How vulnerabilities to the impacts of climate change will determine the probability or likelihood that the asset will fail;
- Resilience: The resilience of an asset to the impacts of climate change; and,
- Adaptation: How the ability to adapt to the impacts of climate change will affect the consequence(s) of failure.
The use of the new formula within Kenora’s risk assessment framework will require individual asset characteristics to be evaluated, in accordance with the four factors listed above, in order to produce an asset risk rating. From an asset characteristic perspective, PSD Citywide will be examining how different materials, designs, and technologies impact the consequence and probability of failure.
Once this project has been completed, Kenora will have the tools and know-how to reduce the City’s vulnerability and increase the overall resilience to the projected impacts of climate change on municipal assets. By integrating the data produced in the climate change risk assessment framework with Kenora’s asset management practices, every stage of the Asset Management Roadmap will be informed of the appropriate steps to mitigate, adapt to, and build resilience against the impacts of climate change-related events.
Thought Leadership
In spearheading this initiative, Kenora has positioned itself to be a leader in municipal climate change adaptation and resilience-building by adopting and tailoring best practices employed by municipalities combatting the impacts of climate change from around the world. Once completed, this asset management-integrated climate change risk assessment framework will serve as an exemplary model for Canadian municipalities across the country.
STEFANIE FISHER, MA received her Honour’s bachelor’s degree from King’s University College at Western University in Political Science and her master’s degree from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. Previously, Stefanie has worked as a research assistant, contributing to several different projects, including one on the Futures of Terrorism. In addition, as a part of her master’s research she looked at municipal critical infrastructure and the different regional infrastructure funding programs such as the Ontario Gas Tax Fund.
