2026 CRHNet Symposium

As Canadian communities navigate rising disasters and climate impacts, limited staff capacity, and growing expectations for transparent, defensible decision making, the need for fit-for-purpose risk assessment approaches has never been more pressing. Climate and disaster risks are becoming increasingly complex and interconnected. Local governments face pressure to assess risks with accuracy and confidence yet often struggle with too much information in some areas and not enough in others. This raises a fundamental question. What type of risk assessment is appropriate for the decision context, and how much information is actually required to support responsible action.
Risk assessment methods vary widely in assumptions, data needs, and application. Some approaches emphasize local knowledge and context. Others prioritize structured analysis and precision. Each offers strengths and limitations. This ninety-minute session invites participants to explore how these methods shape understanding and decision making.
Using a fictional community, participants are divided into groups and given either a traditional or systems based assessment. Through a structured worksheet, groups examine the type and depth of questions can they can answer, the decisions it can support, and the assumptions it relies on. This creates a reflective and applied learning experience where the focus is on evaluating the method itself rather than performing technical calculations.
A comparative dialogue follows, where insights, limitations, and implications are shared across groups. Together we explore how capacity, governance, consultant involvement, and organizational culture influence the selection and effectiveness of different approaches.
The session will highlight:
• When and how qualitative and quantitative methods can be leveraged
• How capacity and process design shape assessment results
• Practical strategies for integrating risk information into plans and operations

The session will be structured as a 60-minute interactive workshop in which participants actively play a shortened version of the 'Just' Flood Resilience Co-op (JFRC) serious game. The session will begin with a brief introduction outlining the need for more inclusive and culturally grounded approaches in flood governance, particularly in relation to minoritized ethnic communities. This short framing will introduce the concept of serious games (games with an objective more than mere entertainment)  as participatory tools that can support learning, dialogue, and reflection on complex disaster risk reduction challenges.

Participants will then be organized into small groups and guided through a facilitated gameplay session using selected scenarios from the JFRC game. Through gameplay, participants will take on decision-making roles and engage with governance dilemmas, resource constraints, and justice trade-offs commonly encountered in urban flood resilience planning. The game mechanics encourage discussion, negotiation, and collaborative problem-solving as players respond to evolving flood risk scenarios.

During the activity, the facilitator will periodically pause gameplay to prompt brief reflections and highlight how the scenarios mirror real governance tensions around participation, resource allocation, and recognition of diverse community needs. This allows participants to connect the game experience with broader questions about equity, resilience, and decision-making in flood risk management.

The session will conclude with a short group reflection and discussion, where participants share insights from the gameplay and consider how serious games could be used in their own professional or community contexts. This format emphasizes experiential learning, peer exchange, and critical reflection, offering participants a practical introduction to serious gaming as a tool for engaging diverse stakeholders in conversations about flood resilience and justice.

This presentation will explore a research project titled "Learning from Indigenous Perspectives for Wildland Fire Management from Treaty 5 and 9 Remote First Nations"— a collaboration between Keewaytinook Okimakanak Tribal Council (KOTC), Lakehead University, and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, aimed at understanding how to better support the values, needs, and resilience of remote First Nations community members in relation to wildfire management and evacuations.

Our goal is to present stories and lived experiences that members of KOTC member communities shared with us. Participants in the research discussed motivations for engagement in wildfire management activities; aspects of evacuations that caused stress; barriers and gaps that hindered participation in wildland firefighting and mitigation activities, and that undermined effective evacuations; and pathways to success, where activities overcame challenges and benefitted both individuals and the wider community. Through these stories, we can better understand the impacts of wildfire-related emergencies and gain insight into the preparedness that affects response and recovery, the hopes of community members, and the building of community-led resilience. The CRHNet Symposium theme "Living the Lessons: From Impact to Insight", aligns with the community-led objectives that shaped this research – to learn from the lived experiences of those who have been on the frontlines of Indigenous wildfire management and those who have lived through wildfire-related evacuations, and to find ways to integrate the lessons we learn into wiser practices and decision-making processes. We will discuss seven wise practices for wildfire management with remote First Nations that emerged from this research. For policymakers and practitioners, this presentation will offer considerations for and insights into how to translate lessons from the past into actions for building stronger, more resilient communities in the future.

We would also like to share a link to some of the work that has come out of this project, hosted by our Keewaytinook Okimakanak Tribal Council partners at https://kogeo.ca/catalogue/#/documents?filter%7Bcategory.identifier.in%7D=Wildfire .

Boulder, Colo. (USA) – like much of the Rocky Mountain State – is continuing to face increased threat from wildfire.

As Colorado continues to expand its preparedness and pass new laws that mandate that insurance companies take into account mitigation measures, among other new measures, the City of Boulder is also taking critical steps to mitigate risk in their community.

Boulder has been investing in tools to help make better data-driven decisions, primarily through expanded, high-quality home assessments.

Attendees will hear directly from Danielle McNutt, Boulder Fire-Rescue’s community risk reduction senior program manager and Fire Aside’s CEO, Jason Brooks, about how her agency was inundated with Wildfire Detailed Home Assessment requests (DHA) following the Marshall Fire and scaled to meet the moment.
McNutt will hone in on a tangible and real-world example: the Wonderland Hills community in Boulder.

By collaborating with one of the United States' top minds on predicting wildfire behavior in the built environment, Dr. Hussam Mahmoud of Vanderbilt University, McNutt was able to implement very specific and impactful choices.

Wonderland Hills constitutes 15 homeowners’ associations (HOA), which means that close collaboration is required between residents, community leaders, fire officials, and numerous public agencies and other regional partners.

By leveraging regional and local grant incentives for maximum impact, the City of Boulder is ensuring vegetation work by Boulder County Parks & Open Space is matched by residents to do their part to maximize risk reduction and return on limited public funds.

As a result of this vision, Wonderland Hills and Boulder homeowners now have access to high-quality, detailed, and actionable risk assessment information about how to protect themselves.

Following the talk, attendees will be able to go to their local policymakers and make a clear and compelling case as to why their community can repeat this playbook.

Building resilience to flooding begins with the communities who experience these impacts most directly. As cities face mounting pressures from climate change, urbanization, and increasing impervious surfaces, sustainable stormwater management has become crucial for reducing flood risk and safeguarding community well-being. Green infrastructure (GI) has proven effective as a nature-based approach, yet its adoption has often been limited by social, technical, and institutional challenges. Understanding the factors that supported successful implementation in past projects is therefore essential. This study employs a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) across 16 GI case studies to identify the combinations of factors that enable successful adoption and implementation. The analysis showed that stakeholder engagement was a central driver, encompassing public participation by government and public agencies, interagency collaboration among diverse organizations, contributions from private-sector partners, and most notably community involvement. Although each form of engagement played a role, community involvement stood out across cases, as many projects actively included residents in planning and decision-making or were implemented specifically to address community needs. The study also found that Regulatory Policies and Regulations consistently operated alongside engagement, reinforcing their importance in supporting GI adoption. The findings reveal that strong regulatory frameworks paired with inclusive stakeholder engagement, especially community participation are the key factors underpinning successful and sustainable green infrastructure implementation for flood-risk reduction.

Resilience in emergency management is often described as something communities build from within through preparedness, relationships, and adaptive capacity. However, many communities, especially those in northern and remote regions, experience resilience as something shaped, enabled, or withdrawn by decisions made far beyond their control. This presentation examines how external power dynamics, including political, economic, and infrastructural factors, actively create or erode community resilience. It argues that emergency management must broaden its understanding of what truly determines a community’s ability to withstand and recover from disruption.

Using the recent cancellation of Starlink connectivity expansion in northern Ontario, which was connected to Canada and United States trade tensions, I explore how a decision unrelated to hazards had significant implications for emergency communication, digital inclusion, and community well-being. This case illustrates that resilience is not only a local outcome but also a product of dependencies on infrastructure providers, regulatory decisions, global supply chains, and policy environments.

The presentation introduces the idea of “externalized resilience,” which refers to resilience that depends on systems and actors outside community control. I discuss the implications for risk reduction, planning assumptions, northern and Indigenous communities, and the need to account for structural dependencies in resilience strategies. By examining resilience through the lens of power, the session encourages participants to rethink where vulnerability originates and how it can be addressed.

Canada’s disaster risk environment is evolving faster than many of our governance structures, planning models, and communication systems were designed to handle. Wildfires, floods, cyber incidents, public health emergencies, infrastructure disruptions, and societal pressures increasingly intersect to create compounding and cascading impacts across communities. In this context, communication must be understood as a core operational capacity within disaster risk reduction.

Internal information coordination impacts external communication, and when it is delayed, fragmented, or inconsistent, it results in heightened risk, making it difficult to establish and sustain public trust.

This session draws on recent Canadian and international events to explore the interconnected nature of contemporary emergencies and the role of communication in shaping risk perception, decision-making, and collective action. It also examines misinformation and digital disruption as emerging hazards that directly influence vulnerability and resilience.

Grounded in the theme of “Living the Lessons: From Impact to Insight,” this presentation synthesizes evidence, practitioner experience, and behavioural research to outline a forward-looking framework for 2026 and beyond. Participants will gain practical, scalable approaches they can adapt to their own organizations, including methods to strengthen internal information flow, improve cross-system message alignment, pre-bunk misinformation, and activate trusted networks to support community-level resilience. The session aims to strengthen linkages among research, policy, and practice to advance DRR outcomes across Canada.

As Alberta faces compounding disasters, we must move beyond standard ideas of emergency responders and recognize the important role of community organizations, Friendship Centres, as frontline emergency responders.

A facilitated question and answer session with the Insight Talk presenters on a different take on what resilient infrastructure and institutions mean.

Concerts are a venue where popular culture and disaster risk can intersect. The phenomenon of Taylor Swift and the cultural juggernaut of her Eras Tour stops in Canada will be used to illustrate how the emergency management community of scholars and practitioners can situate concerts in the domain of emergency management.

The findings presented are based on research work by York University graduate student Talia Shortt and Professor Jack Rozdilsky who both explored: 1) Implications of the global Taylor Swift Eras Tour concert phenomenon and 2) Local Toronto experiences of the Eras tour. Both case study and participant observation methods were applied to better understand theoretical and practical aspects of concert safety.

In context, Swift’s body of work fosters deep para-social connections where young women and girls feel seen, validated, and find home in a community that actively engages in discussions around personal and social transformation. Unfortunately, in today’s polarized society Swift and her fandom can inadvertently become symbolic targets for those people invested in the preservation of traditional hierarchies and exclusionary ideologies.

Three take-aways that have been derived from study of Swift’s Eras Tour will be highlighted. First, understanding the social and culture contexts of the concert event itself are necessary for emergency managers to comprehend the potential risks present. Second, the recognition by municipalities of the necessity to treat concerts with a level of preparedness similar to that of special events and festivals is important. Third, and perhaps most important, is the need for emergency management authorities to engage in public outreach with concert goers to provide them with tips on how they can be prepared on an individual level to attend mass gatherings. The presentation will conclude with an interactive element engaging the audience in an exercise developing an individual concert safety plan.

Disaster recovery often shortchanges communities by prioritizing quick fixes over lasting resilience, leaving local voices unheard and local capacities untapped. Communities need an approach that strengthens resilience from within. This storytelling session draws on recovery experience from the B.C. atmospheric floods and other events to show how resilience grows when communities lead their own recovery. Grounded in more than a decade of work with Samaritan’s Purse, the session demonstrates how shifting from a reactive, deficit-based mindset to a proactive Asset-Based Community Development approach transforms recovery from frustration to empowerment, connection, and long-term capacity building.
Participants will learn how community-driven initiatives such as faith-based financial aid coalitions, mental health and wellness events, and multi-sector resiliency task forces demonstrate the power of local leadership when supported by the right tools, relationships, and frameworks. The session introduces the Resiliency Roadmap, which focuses on accompanying, empowering, and connecting as a model for fostering trust, strengthening social capital, and increasing community ownership. It also highlights Asset Mapping, a strengths-based approach that identifies and visualizes local resources and capacities to support positive change and resiliency in communities.
Aligned with the conference theme of Community-Led Resilience, this session emphasizes that resilience is not about returning to what was but about building forward. Communities become stronger when personal resilience is supported within existing networks, collaboration is intentional, and local organizations engage in emergency management conversations before disasters strike.
The session demonstrates how a whole-community approach can reduce long-term risk, enhance preparedness, and support more equitable recovery systems. It encourages emergency managers, community organizations, and policymakers to recognize and invest in the capacities already present within communities, using recovery as a catalyst to strengthen local networks and coordinated planning.
Now is the moment to shift from reactive recovery to community-led resilience. This session offers a clear path forward, empowering practitioners to activate local strengths, elevate community voices, and build recovery systems that are more connected, better prepared, and resilient for the long term.

In both 2023 and 2024, Hinton supported neighbouring communities during major wildfire events while managing extended smoke and increased demands on local systems. The experience highlighted a common reality for many smaller and rural communities: strong emergency response capacity is essential, but it must be paired with longer-term planning and coordination to strengthen resilience over time.

Through the Roots for Resilience program, the Town of Hinton, The Resilience Institute (TRI), and the Canadian Red Cross (CRC) worked together to begin that shift. The partners completed a Climate Risk Assessment, a Climate Resilience Gap Analysis, validated and evolved through conversations with community organizations and residents that surfaced current strengths, capacity considerations, and priority areas for action. These inputs informed the development of Hinton’s Community Climate Resilience Plan, which outlines a set of practical steps the Town and partners can take to strengthen the resilience of vital interdependent local systems (e.g., social, ecological, economic, health, emergency management, and built environment).

This presentation will share how the partnership approach supported alignment across organizations, how the understanding of resilience has evolved locally, and the early actions now underway.

Disaster and emergency management (DEM) is increasingly complex. Understanding who makes up the DEM system, the roles they perform, and the relationships which influence system capability and performance - before, during, and after a disaster - is essential to building societal resilience. This presentation critically examines DEM as a complex adaptive system, using New Zealand as a case study.