Flood Mapping & Mitigation

Over  the  past  decade,  the  City  of  Dawson  Creek  has  felt  the impacts  of  flooding on  the people, infrastructure and businesses. To better understand flood risk, the City completed a Flood Mitigation Planning Report (Ebbwater, 2018) which served as a gap analyses and preliminary flood risk assessment. In this report, based on historical events, the Dawson Creek community and watershed were identified as having a moderate to high risk to the effects of flooding. As a first priority, it was recommended that the City update flood mapping through a holistic lens.

Figure 1: Dawson Creek Flood Events. Ebbwater, 2018.

In March of 2019, the City received grant funding from Emergency Management BC and Public Safety Canada for the amount of $295,000 to produce current flood mapping. This work not only updated the City’s current flood map completed in 1974, but it integrated hydraulic (depth and velocity), hydrometric (flows) and geomorphic (erosion hazards) characteristics of the creek (Ebbwater, 2020).

Flood mapping work is essential to understanding what areas become wet during different sized flooding events, but mapping alone does not provide mitigation strategies. Understanding the best solutions to community based flood resiliency requires a review of all past research and possible mitigation options. Due to the diversity of impacts (direct and indirect) throughout the whole watershed, the best approach to community resiliency is to consider both structural (infrastructure) and non-structural methods (Emergency Response, community preparedness, planning and policy development etc.).

The City is currently working towards both structural and non-structural mitigation options to enhance flood resiliency in our community.