Title: Climate Change Adaptation for Canadian Core Public Structures and Infrastructures
Instructors: Dr. Zoubir Lounis, P.E., M.ASCE, Principal Research Officer, National Research Council Canada; Dr. Alex Cannon, Research Scientist, Environment and Climate Change Canada; Dr. Sihan Li, P.E., CRM, M.ASCE, Senior Scientist, Rowan Williams Davies & Irwin Inc. (RWDI)
Date: September 22, 2022
This webinar introduces experiences and lessons learned through an applied research initiative focused on climate change adaptation of Canadian core public structures and infrastructures. Canada’s climate is warming at twice the rate of global warming. The cost of adaptation to climate change and extreme weather events has gradually increased and is estimated to reach $21-43 billion per year by 2050 for Canada. A comprehensive research initiative on climate-resilient buildings and infrastructure that involved many partners and stakeholders was led by the National Research Council of Canada from 2016-2020. This webinar introduces this Canadian research initiative, which involved climate scientists, structural engineers and code and standard developers, and presents some of the key findings. This webinar provides an overview of Canada’s initiative on climate-resilient buildings and core public infrastructure, scientific evidence for future climate projections, ready-to-use climatic design datasets, and engineering implementation of climate change provisions for the design of climate-resilient buildings and infrastructure. The webinar is organized to cover three critical aspects, namely: (i) Overview of the overall Canadian research initiative on climate-resilient buildings and core public infrastructure; (ii) Overview of the climate models used, guidance on selecting different emission scenarios, confidence levels in temperature, precipitation and wind loads, as well as illustrative future climatic data needed for the design of buildings and bridges; and (iii) Discussion of the engineering implementation of future projections of climatic data for the structural design of buildings and effects on the climatic design wind loads and ground snow loads.