Twenty Years of Flood Risk Mapping Under the Canadian National Flood Damage Reduction Program

Abstract

In the early 1970s, Canada faced a problem similar to the United States and other countries that resulted from a reactive strategy towards floods and flooding: ever increasing expenditures of flood control structures together with increasing expenditure on flood disaster assistance without any reduction in flood damage potential. Canada’s cities were growing and there was pressure for development in the nation’s floodplains and increasing demands on governments to provide flood control. Canada’s response to this problem, the National Flood Damage Reduction (FDR) Program, is described by Bruce [1]. “Past governmental contributions to flood relief and flood control structures have not curbed floodplain investment processes nor the concomitant increase in damage potential. The new program is intended to coordinate federal and provincial strategies by clearly defining flood-risk areas, by discouraging continuing investment in those areas, and by following up with appropriate measures to limit damage to existing development.”