Cascadia Climate Resilience Society – Knowledge Mobilization

This Mitacs internship project supports the Cascadia Climate Resilience Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction (DRR) in British Columbia through cross-sector dialogue and collaboration. The Society convenes scientists, policymakers, practitioners, Indigenous leaders, and community organizations through initiatives such as the annual BC Climate Resilience Summit (BCCRS), building on the legacy of Understanding Risk BC and aligning with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.

While the BCCRS has been highly effective in bringing together diverse expertise, a key challenge remains: how to systematically capture, synthesize, and mobilize the insights generated during summit sessions so they can inform policy and practice beyond the event itself. This project addresses that gap by transforming the Summit from a primarily knowledge-sharing forum into a structured knowledge-to-action platform.

Working with the Society and academic supervisors at the University of Waterloo, Mitacs intern Katherine Allaby will design and pilot new processes that embed policy and practice intentions directly into summit planning and delivery. These include redesigning session proposal forms to clarify desired impacts, collecting pre-session intentions from presenters and participants, supporting outcome-oriented dialogue during sessions, and producing structured post-summit synthesis materials. Key outputs will include a session-level and event-level synthesis report, actionable recommendations, and a policy brief template to guide future policy-relevant communications.

By strengthening how knowledge is co-developed, synthesized, and mobilized, the project will enhance the Society’s ability to support multi-hazard, whole-of-society resilience in southwest British Columbia. The approach is designed to be reproducible and scalable, offering a model for other Canadian and international convenings seeking to bridge the science–policy–action gap in climate resilience and disaster risk reduction.

Faculty Supervisor:

Brent Doberstein;Sharmalene Mendis-Millard

Student:

Partner:

Cascadia Climate Resilience Society

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

University of Waterloo

Program: