Spatial dashboards of socio-economic and population consequences in flood-prone areas

The management of the 2017 and 2019 floods in Quebec highlighted the many consequences of such events. Municipal and regional authorities must maintain the management capacity to reduce impacts on the population and on the socio-economic environment. To better understand these impacts, a consequence-based approach can be adopted. The project aims to systematize such an approach by developing a specific methodology for evaluating the consequences on populations and on local economic activities, adapted to any type of flood, whether springtime or exceptional.

The main objective of the project is to develop spatial dashboards of the risks related to floods in an area.
To accomplish this, the following sub-objectives will be met :

• Document a methodology for characterizing floodplains

• Develop spatial indices of population and socio-economic vulnerability linked to flood ratings

• Document the mechanisms for extracting and processing the data available in an area

• Develop a spatial and non-spatial database architecture for population and socio-economic vulnerability indices

A dynamic methodological approach will ensure that the research is rapidly deployed with our collaborators. An action research method will serve as the main framework for the project. It consists of four main iterative steps: the definition of a problem, the development of solutions, the proposal of solutions, and then the validation of the solutions. This method is based on collaboration between all the stakeholders involved in a project and is carried out in the form of incremental cycles.

To strengthen and properly structure this collaboration, tools based on the flexible systems method will be used. The aim is to map field-based knowledge through modelling and simulation workshops to fully understand the multi-criteria and multi-level nature of the decision-making of the various stakeholders in the field.

• Consequences linked to water level ratings mapped over an area

• Dashboards identifying socio-economic and population vulnerabilities, including notions of thresholds linked to actions

• A network of organizations concerned with the management of consequences