Infrastructure has to adapt to climate change: Canadian Construction Association

Kelly LaPointe in the Daily Commercial News (Canada): Canada’s infrastructure challenge is not just dealing with aging roads and bridges, but preparing infrastructure to withstand climate change as well. “That one in 100 year storm...it’s not coming one in 100 now, it’s one in every 50 and they’re more severe so as a result there’s been many more instances where weather has overpowered the existing infrastructure,” said Michael Atkinson, president of the Canadian Construction Association (CCA).

“Climate change adaptation. There’s no question that that will be a major theme of infrastructure strategy and planning in Canada going forward.”

This was just one of the examples of the importance of a federal long-term infrastructure plan by the Municipal Infrastructure Forum at a recent press conference stressing the need for sustained long-term infrastructure funding once the current Building Canada Plan expires in 2014.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) started the Forum in February 2012 in partnership with key infrastructure stakeholder groups from across the country to ensure that the right plan is developed for the entire country. Robert Tremblay, director of research for the Insurance Bureau of Canada, pointed out that Superstorm Sandy is expected to generate insured losses in the $20 billion range for the U.S. Eastern Seaboard....

Montreal's Victorian Bridge, shot by douaireg, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license