CLIMATE CHANGE

BC Heat Dome: Impacts, Response, and Recovery

In June 2021, BC experienced a heat dome—a high-pressure weather system that traps heat, with record-high temperatures across the province reaching up to an astonishing 49.6°C. It was determined that the magnitude of the heat dome was made 150 times more likely as a result of climate change. This presentation will review the efforts taken by professional regulatory bodies, academia, the government, and the social housing sector to address overheating in buildings, with specific discussion around evaluating thermal comfort and overheating, strategies to reduce overheating risk through active and passive design measures, and planning considerations in wholistic risk reduction.

Speakers

Christy Love, P.Eng.

Christy Love is a senior project engineer at RDH Building Science, who focuses on efficient building systems, research, and sustainability. For the past 20 years, she has been designing, evaluating, and researching energy, carbon, and water-efficient solutions for the built environment. Her current focus is improving the performance of existing buildings through applied research and supporting the development of related policies and programs.

Harshan Radhakrishnan, P.Eng.

Harshan supports programs and initiatives as they relate to areas of climate action, adaptation, water management, sustainability, and energy efficiency. This includes work on providing professional practice guidance to registrants on matters related to the professional practice of engineering and geoscience in BC and through Engineers Canada, nationally. Harshan also provides staff support to Engineers and Geoscientists BC’s Climate Change Advisory Group, Sustainability committee, and other designated committees, including the BC Energy Step Code Council.

Magda Szpala

Magdalena (Magda) Szpala is an uninvited settler on the traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. In her current position as Director, Sustainability and Resilience at BC Housing, Magda is responsible for strategic leadership in integrating social and environmental priorities into the organization’s activities. Magda was responsible for BC Housing’s first Carbon Neutral Action Report and led the development of BC Housing’s first Climate Adaptation Framework. She’s been working on BC Housing’s Extreme Heat Response for the last few years. She is also a co-lead for the Mobilizing Building Adaptation and Resilience (MBAR) initiative that focuses on resilient building design and renovations. She holds a B.Sc. (Hons) degree in psychology, and a masters degree in Strategic Leadership toward Sustainability.

Emina Ćerimović

Emina Ćerimović is a senior researcher on disability rights at Human Rights Watch. She leads the organization’s work on the protection of people with disabilities in situations of risk and humanitarian emergencies worldwide. In Summer 2021, she investigated the impacts of climate change-exacerbated heat on the rights of older people and people with disabilities in British Columbia, Canada. She has also documented harms children and people with disabilities face in armed conflicts in several countries, shackling and abuses against people with mental health conditions in Nigeria, the institutionalization of children and adults with disabilities in Croatia and Serbia, and discrimination in access to education for children with disabilities. Ćerimović holds a law degree from the University of Sarajevo and an LLM degree from the Central European University in Budapest.

Bridging Silos in Design Teams, One Climate Indicator at a Time

Design professionals (including engineers, technicians, architects, planners, and environmental experts, etc.) must consider how the projected range of environmental conditions will impact the functioning of their designs throughout their lifecycle. Historical design codes and industry standards no longer serve professionals since they do not account for a changing climate. During this session, learn from Elise Pare and Morgan Tidd, as they recount their journey working with integrated design teams in a variety of sectors, to explore the challenges and opportunities of bridging silos within design teams—especially as it relates to using a climate-risk management approach to integrate climatic data to inform design and lifecycle decisions.

Speakers

Morgan Tidd, P.Geo.

Morgan Tidd is a professional geoscientist with over 16 years of experience, specializing in coastal and fluvial geomorphology, oceanography, and sediment transport. Her coastal geomorphology and oceanography projects have involved the assessment of coastal erosion and sedimentation, quantification of sediment budgets, littoral processes, and analysis of hydrographic parameters from both field and desktop studies. Data analyzed includes tides, water levels (seasonal variation, storm surge, sea level rise), waves, currents, sediment sources and sinks, and water quality parameters. Tidd has extensive experience planning, executing, collecting, analyzing, and interpreting hydrographic and geomorphological data. Much of her current work includes a consideration of climate change and therefore requires the incorporation of future predictions of meteorological and sea level change into assessment. She holds a master’s degree in environmental science coastal geomorphology from the University of Toronto Scarborough, where her thesis focused on sediment transport trends offshore of Frenchman’s Bay, Ontario.

Virginia Sarrazin, P.Eng.

Virginia Sarrazin is a Senior Climate Risk and Resilience Advisor for WSP Canada Inc. and is located in Whitehorse, Yukon. Virginia has a background in water and wastewater treatment with 20 years of experience designing and managing projects in Quebec, British Columbia and Yukon. Her passion for protecting the environment and helping communities has rapidly led her to develop a strong interest in climate change adaptation. With her experience leading multi-disciplinary projects, she has led many climate risk and resilience assessments on Canada’s infrastructure and is always looking for ways to improve our practice to facilitate considerations for resilience.