Understanding and Assessing Impacts
In order to better understand the impacts of flooding in the Calgary area the IBI Group along with Golder Associates were tasked with creating a flood damage model for the City through the Flood Mitigation Options Assessment Summary. This model visually represented land which would be affected by floods ranging in size from those with a likelihood of occurring every 100 years (1:100) up to those that may occur sometime within the millennium (1:1000). While a wide range of flood sizes were considered, intentions were to address those up to a 1:200 occurrence probability. This model enabled a scenario analysis which considered flood mitigation options against various flood events. This analysis incorporated a robust cost-benefit analysis which was conducted by overlaying various hard engineering interventions onto models of a 1:200 flood scenario in the City of Calgary. Ultimately the cost-benefit analysis showed that neither hard engineering nor buyouts of land in high-risk areas alone could completely mitigate the costs of future damages. Buyouts were also seen as cost-prohibitive, further nullifying this option. The above-mentioned detailed analysis well exceeds current standards and aided in informing future flood mitigation planning and analysis.