Flooding can occur at any time of the year in the Yukon, often with little or no warning. Flooding is an important environmental process, but it can also result in damage to buildings, critical infrastructure, areas of cultural and traditional importance, environmental contamination or even result in harm and loss of life. Recognizing this, Yukon Government’s Emergency Measures Organization (EMO), with funding from the Federal National Disaster Mitigation Program, approached the Northern Climate ExChange (NCE), part of the Yukon Research Centre at Yukon College, to develop an online tool that helps communities and government officials identify areas of current and future flood risk; and an online database that tracks changes in flood risk from region to region and over time.
The core piece of the Yukon Flood Risk Assessment Tool is a map viewer, which displays a variety of thematic layers to allow users to analyze flood risk in a certain community. In support of this objective, NCE developed and piloted a participatory mapping activity in Old Crow to allow Community-members to identify important values that could be damaged or affected in this area (exposure). Yukon government continues work to identify areas that would be affected in the event of a flood (hazard), the combination of hazard and exposure (risk) and how this may change in the future due to climate change.
The flood hazard in most Yukon communities can be determined using information already available from the Yukon Government, Water Resource Branch; however, information pertaining to exposure is best identified by those who live in the community that is at flood risk. This project aimed to engage with local First Nations and communities to identify and discuss flood related vulnerabilities specific to their community and combine them with existing flood hazard information to determine the overall flood risk.
The tool and database was developed and piloted with the participation of the Vuntut Gwichin First Nation and delivered to EMO for further development and integration into future flood decision-making.
Project Coordinator:
Maciej Stetkiewicz, Climate Change and Northern Hydrology Project Coordinator, Yukon Research Centre
Stephanie Saal, Climate Change and Northern Hydrology Technical Analyst,
Northern Climate ExChange, Yukon Research Centre, Yukon College
Web Developement:
Tesera Systems Inc.
Committee Members:
John Coyne, Emergency Management Planner, Emergency Measures Organization, Yukon Government
Rick Janowicz, Manager Hydrology, Water Resource Branch, Yukon Government
Aynslie Ogden, Senior Science Advisor, Executive Council Office, Yukon Government
David Morrisette, Water Resources Engineer, Morrison Hershfield
Elizabeth Scambler, Emergency Planning Officer, BC Provincial Government