Project
PICS Coastal Adaptation: Living with Water
The overall objective of this project is to develop new planning, design and decision-making tools to help communities and the ecosystems they depend on adapt to the impacts of sea level rise and coastal flooding along the South Coast of British Columbia (Canada). A regional scale is necessary to understand and include boundary spanning dynamics in coastal adaptation, and to develop effective tools and frameworks to support solutions across shared ecosystems and shorelines, including frameworks for collaboration, integrated policies, design guidelines and coordinated governance arrangements.
In the subproject ‘Evaluation criteria for the effectiveness of adaptation solutions’ MSc students of Wageningen University explore - as part of their MSc thesis research - how to contribute to decision-support tools for emerging flood adaptation solutions not part of the status quo (e.g. multifunctional dikes, nature-based solutions, managed retreat), and to integrate community values and Indigenous knowledge and perspectives in coastal flood risk assessment. The aim is to broaden the solution space for coastal flood adaptation.
The focus of the Wageningen University subproject is on ongoing coastal flood adaptation initiatives in the South Coast of BC, encompassing the Fraser River Delta, Burrard Inlet and Squamish Delta. This entails Vancouver’s Sea2City Coastal Design Challenge, Surrey’s Coastal Flood Adaptation Strategy, and the Living Dike project in Boundary Bay, and considers the larger delta region and social-ecological contexts in which coastal municipalities operate and interact.