Abstracts
Climate change impacts and adaptation for urban drainage in Quebec: Evaluation of systems' historical performance
Sophie Duchesne1, Alain Mailhot, and Étienne Lévesque
1INRS-Eau, Terre et Environnement
sophie.duchesne@ete.inrs.ca
The dimensioning of urban drainage systems is established on the basis of statistical recurrence criteria derived from available historical meteorological analyses. Should a significant modification occur in the recurrence of major rainstorms, there will likely be an increase in the number of cases of system capacity overflow, leading to flooding of urban areas and/or water backing up in basements. The definition of adaptive measures that can be implemented to ensure that the reliability of these systems is not affected by climate change (i.e. so that capacity overflow risks remain unchanged in the future) requires 1) defining to what extent the recurrence of rain is affected by climate change and 2) identifying how drainage systems respond in actual fact to major episodes of wet weather. Within this context, we are presenting, first of all, the results of an IDF analysis conducted with rain-gauge data from several cities in Quebec for different historical windows. Secondly, the work presented aims to establish, for the province of Quebec, the relationship between the recurrence of rainstorms, the intensity of floods, the overflows caused by wet weather in an urban drainage system, and characteristics of the system. The results of the second analysis of historical data maintained by three Quebec municipalities, will allow parameters characterizing vulnerability of urban drainage to climate change to be identified.
2005-04-05 |
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