Emergency Flood Protection Barriers

There is currently a need for guidelines for testing and verifying as well as selecting and deploying the rapidly deployable emergency flood barriers in an array of coastal and riverine environments and for Canadian specific environment. Such guidelines will provide: designers with valuable insight to refine and optimize their designs; guidance for municipalities to select and deploy these barriers; and enhance accelerated adoption and deployment of these technologies to improve flood resilience across Canada. This proposed New Standard is being developed at the request of government stakeholders. It will provide standardized hydraulic testing procedures and certification metrics for approval of emergency flood barrier technologies specifically for Canadian environments and settings. This will allow for evidence-based decision making by testing emergency flood barrier technologies and verifying them according to standards developed, in turn, allowing flood planners and decision makers to rely on these technologies and include them in their flood protection plans. Further, the effort enables regulation that considers climate change by developing guidelines for emergency flood barrier selection and deployment which are best suited to the unique and changing conditions of the Canadian climate. Municipalities and Federal/Provincial authorities involved in emergency preparedness and response to floods will be the end user of such guidelines.