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Les récits médiatiques et culturels qui circulent sur les événements météorologiques extrêmes (EME) ne sont pas représentatifs de l’ensemble des expériences de personnes sinistrées. Les groupes qui en subissent les conséquences les plus sévères tendent à être ceux que l’on « entend » le moins dans l’espace public. L’approche de recherche narrative permet de documenter une diversité d’expériences d’EME pour en tracer un panorama plus complet. Adoptant une approche narrative féministe, notre recherche a été menée auprès de femmes touchées par des inondations en Beauce. Des extraits d’entrevues semi-directives menées avec des femmes sinistrées offrent une illustration des conséquences psychosociales entrainées par les inondations. Les forces des participantes et certains défis rencontrés en lien avec leurs rôles dans la famille et la communauté sont aussi abordés. La méthode adoptée a permis de collecter des récits d’expérience riches et singuliers qui rendent plus tangibles les effets différenciés des EME. Tenir compte de cette diversité d’expériences favoriserait une prise en charge plus équitable des personnes sinistrées à court, moyen et long terme.

<p><strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> Year-round river discharge estimation and forecasting is a critical component of sustainable water resource management. However, in cold climate regions such as Canada, this basic task gets intricated due to the challenge of river ice conditions. River ice conditions are dynamic and can change quickly in a short period of time. This dynamic nature makes river ice conditions difficult to forecast. Moreover, the observation of under-ice river discharge also remains a challenge since no reliable method for its estimation has been developed till date. It is therefore an active field of research and development. The integration of river ice hydraulic models in forecasting systems has remained relatively uncommon. The current study has two main objectives: first is to demonstrate the development and capabilities of a river ice forecasting system based on coupled hydrological and hydraulic modelling approach for the Chaudi&egrave;re River in Qu&eacute;bec; and second is to assess its functionality over selected winter events. The forecasting system is developed within a well-known operational forecasting platform: the Delft Flood Early Warning System (Delft-FEWS). The current configuration of the systems integrates (i) meteorological products such as the Regional Ensemble Prediction System (REPS); (ii) a hydrological module implemented through the HydrOlOgical Prediction LAboratory (HOOPLA), a multi-model based hydrological modelling framework; and (iii) hydraulic module implemented through a 1D steady and unsteady HEC-RAS river ice models. The system produces ensemble forecasts for discharge and water level and provides flexibility to modify various dynamic parameters within the modelling chain such as discharge timeseries, ice thickness, ice roughness as well as carryout hindcasting experiments in a batch production way. Performance of the coupled modelling approach was assessed using &ldquo;Perfect forecast&rdquo; over winter events between 2020 and 2023 winter seasons. The root mean square error (RMSE) and percent bias (Pbias) metrics were calculated. The hydrologic module of the system showed significant deviations from the observations. These deviations could be explained by the inherent uncertainty in the under-ice discharge estimates as well as uncertainty in the modelling chain. The hydraulic module of the system performed better and the Pbias was within &plusmn;10 %.</p>

This book details the impact of flooding on our environment, and the ways in which communities, and those that work with them, can act to manage the associated risks. Flooding is an increasingly significant environmental hazard which inflicts major costs to the economies and livelihoods of developed countries. This book explores how local communities can identify, manage, and adapt to the ever-increasing damage flooding causes. Focusing on the future role of local communities, the benefits and c

Questions have been raised about the correctness of water quality models with complete mixing assumptions in cross junctions of water distribution systems. Recent developments in the mixing phenomenon within cross junctions of water distribution networks (WDNs) have heightened the need for evaluating the existing incomplete mixing models under real-world conditions. Therefore, in this study, two cross junctions with pipe diameters of 100 Â 100 Â 100 Â 100 mm and 150 Â 150 Â 150 Â 150 mm were employed in laboratory experiments to evaluate six existing incomplete mixing models for 25 flow rate scenarios ranging between 1.5 and 3.0 L/s. It was observed that within the same flow rate scenario, the degree of mixing in a cross junction with a pipe relative roughness of 6.00 Â 10À5 (pipe diameter of 25 mm) was higher than that in a cross junction with a pipe relative roughness of 3.00 Â 10À5 (pipe diameter of 50 mm) and smaller. Considering the real-world size of pipes in evaluating the incomplete mixing models showed that two incomplete mixing models, AZRED and the one by Shao et al., had the best accordance with the results of the laboratory experiments.

Combined sewer surcharges in densely urbanized areas have become more frequent due to the expansion of impervious surfaces and intensified precipitation caused by climate change. These surcharges can generate system overflows, causing urban flooding and pollution of urban areas. This paper presents a novel methodology to mitigate sewer system surcharges and control surface water. In this methodology, flow control devices and urban landscape retrofitting are proposed as strategies to reduce water inflow into the sewer network and manage excess water on the surface during extreme rainfall events. For this purpose, a 1D/2D dual drainage model was developed for two case studies located in Montreal, Canada. Applying the proposed methodology to these two sites led to a reduction of the volume of wastewater overflows by 100% and 86%, and a decrease in the number of surface overflows by 100% and 71%, respectively, at the two sites for a 100-year return period 3-h Chicago design rainfall. It also controlled the extent of flooding, reduced the volume of uncontrolled surface floods by 78% and 80% and decreased flooded areas by 68% and 42%, respectively, at the two sites for the same design rainfall.

The study addresses the need for flood risk anticipation and planning, through the development of a flood zone mapping approach for different return periods, in order to best prevent and protect populations. Today, traditional methods are too costly, too slow or require too many requirements to be applied over large areas. As part of a project funded by the Canadian Space Agency, Geosapiens and the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique set themselves the goal of designing an automatic process to generate water presence maps for different return periods at a resolution of 30 m, based on the historical database of Landsat missions from 1982 to the present day. This involved the design, implementation and training of a deep learning algorithm model based on the U-Net architecture for the detection of water pixels in Landsat imagery. The resulting maps were used as the basis for applying a frequency analysis model to fit a probability of occurrence function for the presence of water at each pixel. The frequency analysis data were then used to obtain maps of water occurrence at different return preiods such as 2, 5 and 20 years.

There is mounting pressure on (re)insurers to quantify the impacts of climate change, notably on the frequency and severity of claims due to weather events such as flooding. This is however a very challenging task for (re)insurers as it requires modeling at the scale of a portfolio and at a high enough spatial resolution to incorporate local climate change effects. In this paper, we introduce a data science approach to climate change risk assessment of pluvial flooding for insurance portfolios over Canada and the United States (US). The underlying flood occurrence model quantifies the financial impacts of short-term (12–48 h) precipitation dynamics over the present (2010–2030) and future climate (2040–2060) by leveraging statistical/machine learning and regional climate models. The flood occurrence model is designed for applications that do not require street-level precision as is often the case for scenario and trend analyses. It is applied at the full scale of Canada and the US over 10–25 km grids. Our analyses show that climate change and urbanization will typically increase losses over Canada and the US, while impacts are strongly heterogeneous from one state or province to another, or even within a territory. Portfolio applications highlight the importance for a (re)insurer to differentiate between future changes in hazard and exposure, as the latter may magnify or attenuate the impacts of climate change on losses.

Read the latest report from UQAM and GRI, looking at options to reduce flood risk for Canadian homeowners living in flood-prone areas.

Résumé L'hydrogéomorphologie étudie la dynamique des rivières en se concentrant sur les interactions liant la structure des écoulements, la mobilisation et le transport des sédiments et les morphologies qui caractérisent les cours d'eau et leur bassin‐versant. Elle offre un cadre d'analyse et des outils pour une meilleure intégration des connaissances sur la dynamique des rivières pour la gestion des cours d'eau au sens large, et plus spécifiquement, pour leur restauration, leur aménagement et pour l'évaluation et la prévention des risques liés aux aléas fluviaux. Au Québec, l'hydrogéomorphologie émerge comme contribution significative dans les approches de gestion et d'évaluation du risque et se trouve au cœur d'un changement de paradigme dans la gestion des cours d'eau par lequel la restauration des processus vise à augmenter la résilience des systèmes et des sociétés et à améliorer la qualité des environnements fluviaux. Cette contribution expose la trajectoire de l'hydrogéomorphologie au Québec à partir des publications scientifiques de géographes du Québec et discute des visées de la discipline en recherche et en intégration des connaissances pour la gestion des cours d'eau . , Abstract Hydrogeomorphology studies river dynamics, focusing on the interactions between flow structure, sediment transport, and the morphologies that characterize rivers and their watersheds. It provides an analytical framework and tools for better integrating knowledge of river dynamics into river management in the broadest sense, and more specifically, into river restoration as well as into the assessment and prevention of risks associated with fluvial hazards. In Quebec, hydrogeomorphology is emerging as a significant contribution to risk assessment and management approaches, and is at the heart of a paradigm shift in river management whereby process restoration aims to increase the resilience of fluvial systems and societies, and improve the quality of fluvial environments. This contribution outlines the trajectory of hydrogeomorphology in Quebec, based on scientific publications by Quebec geographers, and discusses the discipline's aims in research and knowledge integration for river management . , Messages clés Les géographes du Québec ont contribué fortement au développement des connaissances et outils de l'hydrogéomorphologie. L'hydrogéomorphologie a évolué d'une science fondamentale à une science où les connaissances fondamentales sont au service de la gestion des cours d'eau. L'hydrogéomorphologie et le cortège de connaissances et d'outils qu'elle promeut font de cette discipline une partenaire clé pour une gestion holistique des cours d'eau.

Abstract The hydrological processes of cascading hydroelectric reservoirs differ from those of lakes, due to the importance of the inflows and outflows that vary with energy demand. These heat and water advection terms are rarely considered in water body energy balance analyses even though reservoirs are common man-made structures, especially in North America, and thus may affect the regional climate. This study provides a comprehensive assessment of the water and energy balance of the 85-km 2 Romaine-2 northern reservoir (50.69°N, 63.24°W), mean depth of 44 m, highlighting the significant contribution of the advection heat fluxes. The water balance input was primarily controlled by upstream (turbine) inflows (77.6%), while lateral (natural) inflows and direct precipitation represented 21.2% and 1.2%, respectively. As for the reservoir’s heat budget, the net advection of heat accounted on average for 25.0% of the input, of which net radiation was the largest component (73.3%). After accounting for the absence of energy balance closure, latent heat and sensible heat fluxes represented 73.2% and 25.1% of total energy output from the reservoir, respectively. The thermal regime was influenced by the hydrological flow conditions, which were regulated by reservoir management. This played a major role in the evolution of the thermocline and the temperature of the epilimnion, and ultimately, in the dynamics of the turbulent heat fluxes. This study suggests that the heat advection term represents a large fraction of the heat budget of northern reservoirs and should be properly considered.

Abstract Accurately modeling the interactions between inland water bodies and the atmosphere in meteorological and climate models is crucial, given the marked differences with surrounding landmasses. Modeling surface heat fluxes remains a challenge because direct observations available for validation are rare, especially at high latitudes. This study presents a detailed evaluation of the Canadian Small Lake Model (CSLM), a one-dimensional mixed-layer dynamic lake model, in reproducing the surface energy budget and the thermal stratification of a subarctic reservoir in eastern Canada. The analysis is supported by multiyear direct observations of turbulent heat fluxes collected on and around the 85-km 2 Romaine-2 hydropower reservoir (50.7°N, 63.2°W) by two flux towers: one operating year-round on the shore and one on a raft during ice-free conditions. The CSLM, which simulates the thermal regime of the water body including ice formation and snow physics, is run in offline mode and forced by local weather observations from 25 June 2018 to 8 June 2021. Comparisons between observations and simulations confirm that CSLM can reasonably reproduce the turbulent heat fluxes and the temperature behavior of the reservoir, despite the one-dimensional nature of the model that cannot account for energy inputs and outputs associated with reservoir operations. The best performance is achieved during the first few months after the ice break-up (mean error = −0.3 and −2.7 W m −2 for latent and sensible heat fluxes, respectively). The model overreacts to strong wind events, leading to subsequent poor estimates of water temperature and eventually to an early freeze-up. The model overestimated the measured annual evaporation corrected for the lack of energy balance closure by 5% and 16% in 2019 and 2020. Significance Statement Freshwater bodies impact the regional climate through energy and water exchanges with the atmosphere. It is challenging to model surface energy fluxes over a northern lake due to the succession of stratification and mixing periods over a year. This study focuses on the interactions between the atmosphere of an irregular shaped northern hydropower reservoir. Direct measurements of turbulent fluxes using an eddy covariance system allowed the model assessment. Turbulent fluxes were successfully predicted during the open water period. Comparison between observed and modeled time series showed a good agreement; however, the model overreacted to high wind episodes. Biases mostly occur during freeze-up and breakup, stressing the importance of a good representation of the ice cover processes.

At high latitudes, lake-atmosphere interactions are disrupted for several months of the year by the presence of an ice cover. By isolating the water column from the atmosphere, ice, typically topped by snow, drastically alters albedo, surface roughness, and heat exchanges relative to the open water period, with major climatic, ecological, and hydrological implications. Lake models used to simulate the appearance and disappearance of the ice cover have rarely been validated with detailed in situ observations of snow and ice. In this study, we investigate the ability of the physically-based 1D Canadian Small Lake Model (CSLM) to simulate the freeze-up, ice-cover growth, and breakup of a small boreal lake. The model, driven offline by local weather observations, is run on Lake Piché, 0.15 km 2 and 4 m deep (47.32°N; 71.15°W) from 25 October 2019 to 20 July 2021, and compared to observations of the temperature profile and ice and snow cover properties. Our results show that the CSLM is able to reproduce the total ice thickness (average error of 15 cm) but not the ice type-specific thickness, underestimating clear ice and overestimating snow ice. CSLM manages to reproduce snow depth (errors less than 10 cm). However, it has an average cold bias of 2°C and an underestimation of average snow density of 34 kg m −3 . Observed and model freeze-up and break-up dates are very similar, as the model is able to predict the longevity of the ice cover to within 2 weeks. CSLM successfully reproduces seasonal stratification, the mixed layer depth, and surface water temperatures, while it shows discrepancies in simulating bottom waters especially during the open water period.