Evacuations and Resilience Hubs: Preparing Edmonton and Canadian Cities for Extreme Events and Climate Change

This research project to enhance evacuation planning and resilience hub design in Edmonton will be completed through a partnership between the University of Alberta, Alberta Ecotrust Foundation, the City of Edmonton, and Mitacs. The graduate student interns will complete and guide research tasks related to data collection (e.g., survey and focus groups), data analysis, and research dissemination. This partnership’s primary impact for partner organizations will be to substantially expand the generalizability of the empirical results to the broader Edmonton area and cities across Canada that face increasing risks from climate-related disasters (e.g., flooding, wildfires, heatwaves). The partnership’s secondary impact will be to directly inform evacuation and response planning in Edmonton, across Alberta, and throughout Canada. Finally, the partnership will enable significant training and experiential opportunities for two graduate students as they prepare for a career in transportation engineering.

Faculty Supervisor:

Stephen Wong;Karim El-Basyouny

Student:

Partner:

Alberta Ecotrust

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

University of Alberta

Program: