Morrison Hershfield partnered with BC Housing to develop a Climate Risk Assessment Framework (CRAF) tool – a portfolio-level climate risk screening tool for assessing risks to existing properties, new development sites, and potential acquisitions. The tool supports a consistent approach to prioritization and decision-making across regions and assets.

As part of the goal of achieving a balance between comprehensiveness and ease of use, the CRAF tool focuses on six primary climate risk categories identified as priorities by BC Housing including: extreme heat events, extreme rainfall and flooding, emergency power, wildfire risk, wildfire smoke, and general air quality. Using a regional archetype approach with user-input site-specific customization, the tool evaluates climate hazard likelihood and assesses consequences across four weighted categories including Properties and Assets, Site and Environment, Social and Programming, and Health and Safety.

The CRAF tool provides BC Housing with consistent methodologies for understanding climate risks and prioritizing resilience projects across their assets and locations. Through its easy-to-use Excel platform, the CRAF tool enables high-level screening for climate risks and identifying assets that would benefit from further analysis. The CRAF tool will assist BC Housing with assessing site viability, developing proposal scoring for new developments, risk mitigation strategy identification and prioritization, and project budget allocation for climate-focused projects.

There are multiple outcomes and co-benefits of the CRAF tool, which include improvement of resident health and safety, reduction of long-term O&M costs, maintaining standards of service, and guidance on the direction of BC Housing’s policies and priority actions.

The integration of climate change risk and resilience into portfolio-scale asset management is a complex challenge due to competing priorities and budgets, variations in property types and geographies, and individual building characteristics. BC Housing’s Climate Resilience Assessment Framework (CRAF) tool addresses this challenge through a user-friendly workbook that enables consideration of climate associated risk in planning, acquisition, and development projects at BC Housing properties across the province.
Aligned with recognized frameworks including PIEVC and BC’s Strategic Climate Risk Assessment Framework, the CRAF tool was developed to identify the highest climate risks at a selected site within one of eight defined regions. A combination of regional climate profiles and user-defined site-specific attributes and characteristics address six primary climate hazards including flooding and rainfall, emergency power, extreme heat events, wildfire risk, general air quality and wildfire smoke, projected into the 2050s and 2080s.

To recognize the importance of maintaining BC Housing’s level of service delivery when affected by climate events, the tool considers risks and opportunities for resilience to the property and site, and to resident health and safety and continuity of programming. Asset managers and project teams can now compare climate risk scores across properties and calculate the effect of implementing recommended mitigation measures to the highest risks.

The CRAF tool allows BC Housing to apply a standardized approach to climate risk assessments across the province. Climate consideration can now be used to assist with determining site viability for new development, development proposal scoring across sites, and prioritization and budgeting of risk mitigation strategies. The result is a first-of-its-kind tool that can be used for municipalities across BC, with the potential for future expansion to additional climate risks and communities.