ICLR Friday Forum: Urban Rainfall: Climate change + extreme rainfall events (January 26, 2018)

On January 26, ICLR held a Friday Forum webinar title ‘Urban Rainfall: Assessing climate change and extreme rainfall events’ led by Andrew Wiens, Senior Water Resources Engineer at Associated Engineering.

Extreme rainfall and the anticipated effects of climate change pose a significant urban flood risk. Recently, the City of Surrey engaged Associated Engineering to develop numerical models for evaluating flooding from rainfall events and for estimating economic losses due to flooding. This study also examined the anticipated changes to rainfall patterns as a result of climate change and evaluated several potential methods for mitigating flood damage to private property. This presentation covered the following information:
1. Sources of Urban Flooding;
2. Urban Flood Risk Importance;
3. Risk Assessment Components:
a. Estimating rainfall and runoff amounts
b. Estimating water levels and flood extents
c. Estimating economic losses due to flooding;
4. Case Study: City of Surrey’s Climate Change Rainfall Adaptation Strategy.

Andrew Wiens, Senior Water Resources Engineer, provides technical leadership and specialist hydro-technical expertise for Associated Engineering projects across Western Canada. Andrew specializes in hydraulic analysis and economic flood risk assessment of urban drainage infrastructure during extreme rainfall events and climate change. Andrew has been analyzing large-scale urban stormwater systems using dual drainage models for over 10 years. As part of this work, he has developed credible methods for estimating surface flooding extents and flood routing during extreme rainfall events. In addition, Andrew has developed methods for quantification of economic damage to private property as a result of flood damage due to rainfall, river-based flooding and dam breach analysis.

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