Gov­er­nance of flood risk in Lake Cham­plain and the Riche­lieu River

Fol­low­ing dev­as­tat­ing spring­time floods in 2011 on the Riche­lieu Riv­er and Lake Cham­plain, a joint effort by Cana­di­an and US gov­ern­ments request­ed that the Inter­na­tion­al Joint Com­mis­sion (IJC) exam­ine the risks and prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with flood­ing and pro­pose rec­om­men­da­tions. Fol­low­ing ini­tial work, the IJC’s Inter­na­tion­al Study Board on Lake Cham­plain and the Riche­lieu Riv­er is now con­duct­ing a study on the caus­es, reper­cus­sions, risks and impact of dif­fer­ent solu­tions to flood­ing in this water­shed. The team at Cité-ID Liv­ing Lab, direct­ed by Marie-Chris­tine Ther­rien, will join the social, polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic work­ing group of the project.

The Cité-ID team will study gov­er­nance chal­lenges relat­ed to the pro­posed mit­i­ga­tion and inter­ven­tion sce­nar­ios, as well as analyse issues of polit­i­cal acceptability.

Anoth­er team from the ENAP is sup­port­ing work by Oura­nos to under­take an eco­nom­ic eval­u­a­tion of mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies pro­posed by the IJC.

The Cité-ID Liv­ing Lab will also be respon­si­ble for coor­di­nat­ing the Cana­da-wide social, polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic work­ing group that also includes Oura­nos and researchers from the Uni­ver­sité de Montréal’s Work­ing Group on Adap­tive Capac­i­ty and Resilience (GECAR; CAPORI).

The project will end in 2022.

Doc­u­ments pro­duced for this project

- Recov­ery Plan Tem­plate (Link)