Building a Climate-Resilient City

The document argues that Alberta's cities must move beyond historical climatic patterns to build resilience against more frequent and intense extreme weather events. It emphasizes integrating climate projections into emergency planning, investing in robust and redundant infrastructure, and fostering community resourcefulness through participatory engagement.

• Alberta is projected to experience significant warming, with mean annual temperatures potentially rising by 2.0°C by the 2030s and 4.0°C by the 2060s if global greenhouse gas emissions continue at current rates.
• Traditional municipal planning based on historical return rates, such as the 'one-in-100-year flood', is becoming obsolete because climate change is making the climate system less predictable and more variable.
• Climate change increases the risk of 'compounding' disasters, where multiple extreme events occur in a single season or in quick succession, potentially preventing cities from fully recovering before the next event occurs.
• To build robustness, cities should adopt proactive tools like Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (HIRA) and 'building back better' principles to ensure infrastructure is rebuilt to a standard that withstands future hazards.
• Strategic investments in disaster prevention, such as the Manitoba Red River Floodway, demonstrate significant long-term cost savings; that specific project saved an estimated CAD 8 billion in avoided recovery costs between 1960 and 2008.
• Increasing redundancy in emergency systems is critical, particularly in communications by using multiple channels (TV, Internet, social media, radio) to ensure continuous information exchange if one channel fails.
• Community resourcefulness can be enhanced through the 'Whole Community Approach to Emergency Management', which uses participatory engagement to identify local assets and empower residents.

APA

Temmer, J., Smith, R., & Terton, A. (2017). Building a Climate-Resilient City. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/pcc-brief-disaster-mangement-emergency-preparedness.pdf

Chicago

Temmer, Jennifer, Ryan Smith, and Anika Terton. Building a Climate-Resilient City. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2017. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/pcc-brief-disaster-mangement-emergency-preparedness.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Temmer |first1=Jennifer |last2=Smith |first2=Ryan |last3=Terton |first3=Anika |title=Building a Climate-Resilient City |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=2017 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/pcc-brief-disaster-mangement-emergency-preparedness.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{temmer2017building, author = {Temmer, Jennifer and Smith, Ryan and Terton, Anika}, title = {{Building a Climate-Resilient City}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2017}, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/pcc-brief-disaster-mangement-emergency-preparedness.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }