Workshop: Technologies for Flood Risk Management in Southern Ontario

📣 Workshop alert! Technologies: Data, tools, and infrastructures will bring to you an examination of the technical foundations that enable effective flood risk management in Southern Ontario.

🗓️ Tuesday, October 14, 2025 🕐 1 pm - 2.30 pm 👩‍💻 Open to all municipal and conservation authority staff from Southern Ontario 👥 Co-hosted by Toronto Climate Observatory & Climate Action Partnership 💌 Reach out to taneea@cs.toronto.edu for registration details

💡 What to expect: Join us for an in-depth workshop to explore how the technologies behind our flood information systems shape who gets access to critical data — and who doesn’t — from the nature of the data we collect, to the tools we use to analyze and communicate flood information. We’ll examine how hydrometric networks, satellite monitoring, hydraulic modeling software, and sensor technologies work together to create flood information systems — and how these technical choices can either support or hinder equitable access to vital flood data.

🎙️ Special guest speaker: Dr Rodrigo Costa, Assistant Professor, Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo

Dr Costa’s research focuses on societal and environmental systems and examines how communities’ physical, economic, and social systems interact to exacerbate disaster risk and further socioeconomic and racial inequalities. His goal is to inform targeted interventions to reduce disaster impacts, accelerate recovery, and ensure that all of society participates in the benefits.

Talk title: Repeated and localized flooding is an underestimated challenge for urban disaster risk management

Talk description: While large-scale disasters attract national and federal attention and assistance, localized flood events often don’t qualify for external aid — despite being just as devastating for those impacted. Dr. Costa will present a methodology to evaluate long-term impacts of repeated, localized disasters, showing how a 20-year flood with no external assistance can lead to greater cumulative losses than a 100-year flood event.

🌍 Why it matters: Together, we’ll explore how today’s flood data systems and modeling tools shape equity outcomes, and discuss how we might redesign data collection, processing, and dissemination systems to better serve all communities and support equitable flood risk management across Southern Ontario.

👥 Who should attend: All municipal staff and conservation authority staff from Southern Ontario are welcome, particularly those working on flood risk management, infrastructure resilience, and climate adaptation in Southern Ontario.

📩 Interested in attending? Reach out to taneea@cs.toronto.edu for more details and registration.