Final Report July 2021
From the Executive Summary:
During the past decade, the region of Okanagan Valley has become at greater risk of recurrent floods. The intensity of flood risk has increased and, as a result, the residential neighbourhoods became more vulnerable to flood damage.
The current planning tools and regulatory flood resilience policies are seemingly lagging behind the pace at which floods continue to cause damage to the communities.
Understandably, there is a gap in the current flood planning/policy and the future vision for resilience. Lack of needed cooperation between the multilateral governance at the provincial, First Nations, regional district, and municipal tiers is another critical factor that influence the achievement of the flood mitigation goals in a region.
As a result, the contemporary flood “protection” strategy seems not-so-capable to protect communities from adverse consequences, and calls for a paradigm shift from a flood protection approach to adaptive resilience.