Planning for atmospheric hazards and disaster management under changing climate conditions

Reducing societal vulnerability to weather related disasters under current and changing climate conditions will require a diverse and interconnected range of adaptive actions. Included among these actions are hazard identification and risk assessment, comprehensive emergency and disaster management, improved predictions of high impact weather, better land use planning, strategic environmental and ecosystem protection, continuously updated and improved climatic design values and changes to infrastructure codes and standards to support disaster resistant infrastructure. These actions will need to be undertaken by all levels of government, by individuals, planners, professional associations and investors. One critical disaster reduction response is that of emergency and disaster preparedness, which involves the development of an emergency response and management capability long before a disaster occurs. The provinces of Ontario and Quebec, in central Canada, have both passed provincial legislation requiring that all municipal and regional governments adopt emergency management planning. In support of these legislated measures in Ontario, Environment Canada along with its partner Emergency Management Ontario, have developed an atmospheric hazards publication and web site that supports municipalities in accessing climatological, extreme weather and air quality information, customizing atmospheric hazards maps for their localities and in linking hazards maps. Maps can be functionally linked through cumulative co-recognition software that allows the user to select specific thresholds per hazard map and to display the cumulative result of regional combinations of hazards. Information on climate trends for the hazards variables is presently available on the site, and future plans for the site include climate change trend projections, where appropriate.