An extensive new report from the University of Waterloo and the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, encourages stakeholders to examine the flooding lessons learned in Canada and apply them to earthquake risks. Specifically, the report examines the lessons learned from the Home Flood Protection Program (HFPP) developed by the Intact Centre that may apply to motivating homeowners to protect their homes from earthquake.
Entitled Applying lessons from home flood protection to enhance residential earthquake preparedness: A Canadian perspective, the report points out the interest and awareness Canadians have at the moment regarding flooding and flood risk.
“A common barrier to homeowners and tenants taking action to limit their flood risk is generally not one of willingness, but rather not knowing what action to take,” the report states. “It is reasonable to postulate that a homeowner, upon receiving informed guidance, would take action to limit their vulnerability to earthquake risk.”
Three initiatives discussed include engagement with professional associations, public education and outreach by governments and agencies and a door-to-door outreach campaign for targeted communities in earthquake risk zones.
The professional organizations the paper recommends engagement with include the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada, the Canadian Real Estate Association, home inspector’s associations and others. They say large scale flooding and wildfires in recent memory have brought disaster risk to the forefront of public awareness and concern. “Intact Centre field assessments indicate that flood risk potential is now discussed through various channels and processes, including real estate and homeownership processes. It is therefore envisioned that similar engagement on earthquake risk could take place via the same professional associations and members,” they write.
The paper also discusses the prevalence of earthquake risk in Canada and examines best practices, including communications examples, in depth.
Earthquake protection gap
In Canada, the earthquake protection gap is sizable,” they write. Economic losses from a 9.0 magnitude earthquake in British Columbia and for a similarly probable 7.0 magnitude earthquake in the Quebec City, Montreal and Ottawa corridor, could reach $75-billion and $61-billion, respectively. They estimate that $20-billion or 80 per cent of residential losses that could occur in British Columbia would be uninsured, while $19-billion or 97 per cent of residential losses in the Quebec-Ottawa corridor that would occur in such a scenario, also remain uninsured.
“While we cannot control the occurrence of a natural hazard (earthquake, tsunami, hailstorm, heavy precipitation event, etc.) we can manage or control the expression of risk by reducing the other components – the exposure and vulnerability of people and structures that would potentially be impacted,” the report states. “Flooding and earthquake are two natural hazards for which there is substantial interest in managing risk.”
