As a coastal community, the City of Surrey, B.C., is expected to experience more flooding in the future as a result of climate change (e.g., sea-level rise and changes in precipitation patterns) and due to the region’s low-lying topography. Several sectors are at risk from flooding, including agriculture, recreation and transportation, as well as infrastructure, communities, and local and regional economies. The city was in need of a comprehensive adaptation strategy, and thus developed a Coastal Flood Adaptation Strategy (CFAS). The CFAS project team included experts from multiple disciplines and was grounded in rigorous technical analyses and infrastructure vulnerability assessments. The CFAS also sought to bring community and stakeholder voices into the decision-making process. Strategic directions on adaptation were developed through an iterative adaptive design process where concepts were assessed for feasibility, evaluated using community-identified values as criteria, and presented to stakeholders for further feedback and prioritization. Forty-six actions to be implemented over the next 80 years were identified.
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