Multi-hazard Risk Assessment and Community Resilience

Catalyzing the supporting data, policy, and strategies needed to buffer communities as they confront multiple hazards, and work together to identify multi-solving approaches to minimize risk and advance low carbon resilience.

Canadian communities are on the frontlines facing multiplerisks from climate-fuelled hazards such as heat, drought,wildfire, smoke, flood and landslide. Yet little support is available. Communities and organizations need cost-effective,multi-solving strategies to buffer against the cascading andcompounding effects of these hazards, to proactively and moreeffectively advance resilience-building opportunities.

According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, in 2024 insured damage caused by severe weather events cost surpassed $8B-nearly triple the total insured losses recorded in 2023 and 12 times the annual average between 2001 and 2010.

Wildfires in Alberta burned almost two million acres, forcing the evacuation of Jasper - a cherished national site, destroying 30 per cent of the town’s structures producing millions of tons ofgreenhouse gas emissions, and severely impacting livelihoods, wildlife and ecosystems. In 2021, during the hottest day onrecord, the entire town of Lytton, BC burned to the ground. Years later, this loss is a cautionary tale of the limited and slowsupports available for post-disaster recovery. Over the pastdecade, communities in the Okanagan have experienced moreenduring heat and drought events. In 2023, these compoundingimpacts erupted into wildfires, burning homes and businesses,evacuating and displacing 30,000 people, impacting livelihoodsand key industries such as tourism and agriculture. The 2025 Los Angeles fire showcases how these risks are impacting urban, notjust rural areas.

Greater understanding is needed about the relationshipsbetween gradual, sudden, and cascading hazards and the risksposed to communities so that proactive decisions are made now that minimize costs and losses into the future. The prospect of insured, uninsured, and indirect costs and losses of futureclimate changes requires greater attention. This helps to buildthe financial calculation to start now to invest in minimizing climate impacts for communities and organizations, and theecosystems and economies they depend on.

ADVANCING MULTIPLE BENEFITS

SFU Climate Innovation is using a whole-systems approach tomulti-hazard risk and community resilience-building. Working collaboratively across disciplines and with community-centred partners, we aim to better understand multiple hazards and risks in diverse communities, and to work with partners to achieve four objectives:

• Integrate diverse data sets to determine relationships across multiple hazards.
• Work with community-centred partners to identify keyvulnerabilities and risks, identify multi-solving opportunities,and prioritize approaches and strategies to minimize risk.
• Improve community, economic, and ecosystem resilience bybraiding multiple ways of knowing into community practices,management, and policies while leveraging interactive digitalplatforms for knowledge-sharing.
• Use digital tools to dashboard risks and priorities, producedigital twins for scenario exploration, and advance monitoringand early warning protocols to support decision-makers withactionable tools.

Collaborators