Burnaby is developing a new earthquake strategy

The City of Burnaby has started developing a new strategy and framework to prepare the city for earthquakes in the future. The city has begun the first phase of the project, which it aims to complete by the end of 2024. 

The project, known as the Burnaby Strategies and Actions for Earthquake Resilience (B-SAFER), will take place over five phases. 

According to a report submitted to council on Nov. 4, B-SAFER “will be a citywide framework that takes a comprehensive approach to addressing shocks, such as earthquake, and stressors, including vulnerabilities, like aging infrastructure, and capacity challenges such as systems, response and recovery capabilities, and risk reduction investment to build a roadmap toward holistic organizational and community disaster risk reduction to seismic events.”  

According to the report, the city aims to use scientific and technical evidence to create policies for disaster risk reduction and change its infrastructure and systems to reduce the city’s vulnerability to severe earthquake damage. 

Phase one, which has started, will involve identifying stakeholders and conducting interviews and qualitative research. 

Charmaigne Pflugrath, the city’s emergency management coordinator, told the Beacon the city is currently working on identifying the stakeholders and knowledge keepers. 

“We expect they will include staff from across all city departments, host First Nations, neighbouring jurisdictions, response and support agencies, provincial ministries, non-government organizations and community partners, and members of the public,” Pflugrath said. 

Pflugrath said the city will introduce the project internally early next month and utilize feedback and suggestions from staff gathered during the project launch and a visioning meeting to compile a list of stakeholders.

“The engagement activities will be designed to understand the values that are impacted by seismic hazards in the community and region; assess existing capabilities in mitigating, preparing for, and responding to and recovering from potential disasters; and explore opportunities and gaps in individual, organizational and community resilience,” she said. 

The city will consult with host First Nations to create the framework and has already sent out referral letters to them.  

“The B-SAFER project has intentionally been designed to entwine Indigenous knowledge and traditional stories, emerging scientific research, vulnerability data, and community input,” Pflugrath said. 

Pflugrath said the project’s second phase will build on the initial data inventory and gap analysis from the first phase to decide on the hazard and risk data the city will collect. The project team will then use OpenQuake Engine, an open-source software, to assess seismic hazards and risks. The team will also use additional data specific to Burnaby, such as natural assets and seismic microzonation mapping. The project team will then identify and collect information about about the vulnerability of people and assets.  

The team will then run multiple scenarios using OpenQuake Engine software.

“The earthquake scenarios will help illustrate a myriad of ‘risk assessment themes,’ populations that are disproportionately at risk, geographic hot spots of risk across the city, particular dwelling types at risk, potential impacts to critical infrastructure and related systemic effects, potential vulnerabilities within the first responder community,” Pflugrath said. 

For the regional assessment, which will include transportation systems, upstream and downstream interdependencies, and third-party critical infrastructure, “We will rely on data available within Canada’s national seismic risk model. Engagement with neighbouring municipalities, participating First Nations, and other relevant agencies and organizations will allow for the confirmation and validation of dataset sources and methods, as necessary,” Pflugrath added. 

The project team will also develop “earthquake resilience indices” that will consider any resources the community has to help it be resilient in the event of an earthquake. 

“This will include an assessment of things like insurance availability and uptake, social cohesion/isolation, quality of emergency preparedness plans, first responder and urban search and rescue capabilities,” Pflugrath said.

This piece was made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.

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