British Columbia faces increasing risks from climate change and natural hazards, yet decision-makers have historically lacked a consistent, province-wide and holistic understanding of disaster risk. The Provincial Disaster and Climate Risk and Resilience Assessment (DCRRA) was developed to help close this gap.

Led by the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness and the Ministry of Environment’s Climate Action Secretariat, the DCRRA delivered the most extensive coordinated, multi-hazard assessment of its kind in B.C., covering nearly 950,000 km². As part of a larger consulting team directed by Sage on Earth Inc., BGC completed the geospatial assessment of multi-hazard exposure: compiling and analyzing population and assets in relation to six hazard types including earthquakes, drought, extreme heat, riverine flooding, coastal flooding, and wildfire threat. BGC’s analyses addressed a foundational question shared by everyone facing disaster risk in BC: where are the hazards in relation to what we value?

BGC’s analysis identified hazard exposure of communities, the natural environment, and critical infrastructure, including approximately 5 million people, $900 billion in buildings, and over one million kilometres of transportation, energy, water, petroleum, and communications assets. BGC’s results provided the data underlying the new provincial spatial hazard insights tool, and informed holistic, qualitative risk assessment by a diverse range of experts on the DCRRA team. The larger assessment was developed in collaboration with First Nations, with emphasis on Indigenous and local knowledge, and alignment with the modernized Emergency and Disaster Management Act and the Climate Change Accountability Act.

As part of the larger DCRRA, the results provide a starting point for better understanding and reducing risks in B.C., including future steps of disaster risk management at a regional to local level.

BGC’s team included a multidisciplinary group of specialists in geohazards, data science, risk analyses, and GIS.

Hazard extents were defined based on exceedance probabilities and intensity thresholds, with climate change considered for extreme heat and drought. The team integrated diverse population and asset data and developed software to efficiently intersect these large datasets with hazard data, summarizing results in 1 km by 1 km vector grids. The results yielded screening-level identification of hazard exposure hotspots while maintaining individual hazard-asset intersections for future assessments.

The process to complete province-wide geospatial hazard exposure analysis represented a unique collaboration between BGC’s technical experts and GeoBC, with guidance from EMCR and the DCRRA team. Delivery of the results through a public provincial data portal encourage accessibility and long-term value beyond project completion.

The DCRRA delivered the most extensive province-wide picture of disaster and climate risk ever completed in British Columbia. Insights tool: https://bchazardinsightstool-bcgov03.hub.arcgis.com/

The geospatial assessment yielded foundational data about people and critical infrastructure hazard exposure in a repeatable framework for future updates. The results directly support the new Emergency Act requirements and inform disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation planning across B.C.