Improving the Government of Canada's response to flooding through the inclusion of pertinent economic information

At present, the methods by which costs of flood-related damages are estimated vary significantly across Canada, resulting in widely different and often incomplete quantification of these costs. I use the comprehensive flood-costing methodology that I co-developed in Adeel et al. (2020) to assess the economic impacts of flooding in Canada during 2013 – 2017. This methodology is meant to facilitate flood-planning investments by governments at different levels and allocation of resources to support real-time flood monitoring and response. Public Safety Canada, Indigenous Services Canada, and Natural Resources Canada should standardize and integrate pertinent economic information into existing disaster-response mechanisms, using the methodology proposed herein. Indigenous approaches for evaluating flood damages and losses must also be incorporated. Doing so would standardize the process of post-disaster assessments, facilitate enhancement of local resilience against flood impacts, and improve allocation of resources by the Government of Canada in response to flooding.