Thursday, February 19, 2026
As floods and fire continue to batter the built environment, one climate resilience expert is stressing the importance of shifting from reactive responses to proactive risk mitigation.
Pinchin Ltd. national practice leader for building and sustainability Andrew Epp spoke at a Buildex Vancouver session on Feb. 11 titled “High Tides and High Stakes: Climate Resilience for B.C.’s Built Environment” where he examined ways businesses and governments can plan ahead for coming climate calamities.
Epp’s talk focused on the importance of resiliency regarding climate impacts in addition to building up sustainability.
Early human shelters regardless of form served to protect humans from the elements and keep them safe from threats. Those shelters evolved to serve the needs of those using them, Epp said, but “many of today’s builds do not or cannot last as long as an ancestral building.”
“We used to build shelters to take advantage of nature’s drive towards equilibrium, but modern buildings have a sealed envelope separating terrible conditions (outside) from us,” he said.
Infrastructure and built form resilience, he said, focuses on preparedness, recovery and adaptation.
“It emphasizes reducing vulnerability and increasing adaptive capacity,” he said, while sustainability zeroes in on minimizing environmental impacts and resource use while targeting long-term viability and environmental responsibility.
In practice, he added, resiliency is not complicated.
“You assess risks, rank and score outcomes, define success and take action,” he said.
He stressed the planet is experiencing ‘once in a century” climate events at a significantly accelerated rate and planning for increased risks needs to begin immediately so solutions are already in place before disaster strikes.
“Resiliency planning is no longer optional, it’s essential,” Epp said, adding while Canada’s exposure to climate risks is growing, “so is the opportunity to lead resiliency (efforts).”
He added while responding during a disaster leaves little room to maneuver, people and institutions can control how they prepare before an event and deal with its aftermath.
Steps that should be in place include mitigation planning, purchasing and procurement of materials, implementation of mitigation and an awareness of post-disaster conditions such as the length of a post-flood dry-out period.
Epp pointed to the Climate Risk Institute’s Public Infrastructure Engineering Vulnerability Committee (PIEVC) protocol, introduced in 2005, as a vital tool for assessing future dangers.
“The protocol is developed for infrastructure, so on the engineering and governance side you let them know you’re applying it for a specific group. It’s for the whole built environment,” Epp said. “At that level, it applies to everything.”
“PIEVC is also a more robust model for climate risk because it relies on climate models (for its data),” Epp said.
The protocol utilizes a systemic review of historical climate information to project the nature, severity and probability of future climate events, which in turn establishes the adaptive capacity of individual infrastructure.
Epp stressed while climate risk assessment is an excellent tool to identify and select specific resilient measures, “it does nothing else. You need to execute the measures identified and once complete, revisit and rescore to select the next set of projects. It should be a continual task.”
Epp said there’s still work to be done at a governmental level in terms of moving towards increased climate vigilance.
“As the engineers working at this…there’s a lot of convincing that we have to do. Past conservation projects don’t have the robust set of payback numbers that explain ‘this is what you’re going to get for this investment’,” Epp said.
“Regrettably, climate acceptance is tied into or reflects the geopolitical (situation),” he added. “Because of the absence of a strong set of financials that states ‘this is the return you get on it’ it gets a lot of scrutiny, pushback and debate, which is why it hasn’t really picked up.”
He also pointed out while gathering places such as arenas, city halls and schools are often the focus of disaster preparation, more attention should be paid to infrastructure.
“Your public works department or water treatment isn’t going to get a lot of PEIVC, but is probably the place where it should be, because it houses all the equipment you need to keep the community safe,” he said.
Larger urban centres such as Vancouver, Toronto and Guelph are cities that do have resiliency, he said, because they have already experienced significant climate events.
“Climate is a cycle. In the Lower Mainland there’s the heat dome (June 2021) and then the atmospheric river (Nov. 2021), primarily because of the heat dome. It’s all absolutely connected,” Epp said.
Higher, dryer temperatures in the summer followed by increased rainfall in the fall, winter and spring makes it more difficult for vegetation to grow, which limits natural protection against floodwater as well as a reduced amount of groundwater.
Epp pointed to accelerated changes in building codes at different levels of government as a positive change towards increased resiliency.
“Building codes are the minimum standard and organizations are being pulled along,” he said. “There will always be grumbling but regulations are how the minimum standard gets elevated.”
He added solutions don’t have to be complex to be effective.
“Cheap solutions fail, but clever solutions last,” Epp said, citing examples such as using permeable materials in walkways and parking areas to mitigate flood risks by allowing water to infiltrate the pavement and reduce runoff.
Elevating HVAC and electrical systems off floors is a simple solution, he added, but keeping them above typical flood levels can mean significantly less damage to systems.
“People underestimate power of storms and strength of water, so assume you have enough time to acquire materials and install mitigation measures,” he said.
He added over reliance on complicated controls can be counterproductive under emergency conditions.
“Consider alternatives to complex system controls such as manual overrides, which allow operation in case of a malfunction,” Epp said.
