Proactivity is key for Pouch Cove flood mapping project to help adapt to climate change
CBC
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The Town of Pouch Cove is working to be a municipal trailblazer in climate change adaptation with a new flood mapping project.
Despite having been spared significant flooding or damage to infrastructure throughout the rainy start to the year, the town has paired up with Memorial University to develop a master plan for heavy rainfall events.
"The main thrust of this project was to try to be proactive," said Brian Peach, Pouch Cove's chief administrative officer.
"I wanted to understand, what are the flooding risks in this town?"
As a result, Peach started a flood mapping project with Joe Daraio, hydraulic engineer and associate professor at MUN, and civil engineering PhD candidate Abena Amponsah.
"It's more towards trying to be a bit more, I would say, proactive. You don't want to wait till the situation gets worse before you start putting in measures to prevent flooding," said Amponsah.
"We run different scenarios and find out sections of the town that could potentially flood and then also analyze measures that we could also put in."
The project, called Climate Adaptation Stormwater Control Campaign, received provincial funding and is currently in its first of three phases.
The flood model can be adjusted to take a normal rainfall event or a hurricane into account — or a rain-on-snow event, like the one that caused flooding for many areas on the Avalon Peninsula at the end of January.
Current engineering standards are modelled around a 100-year return period of significant storms and don't account for rain on snow, said Joe Daraio.
"If that starts happening more frequently," said Daraio, "you're going to start seeing more and more damage. But it's very difficult to know how to deal with that because it costs money."
That's why Daraio works to find nature-based solutions.
"Instead of building hard infrastructure, you protect some wetlands, you don't develop parts of the watershed and you allow the natural processes to help keep those flood levels down," said Daraio.
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