Climate Change Staff - Owen Sound

The grant-funded employee will implement initiatives that increase the municipality’s capacity to adapt to climate change. The first phase of work will be to develop a climate risk response plan for the municipality. This plan identifies climate change impacts, risks, and related adaptive strategies or actions related to the region, the community, a neighbourhood or a group of assets. Once the climate adaption plan is developed, the second phase of work will be to implement operational and institutional changes within the municipality that will help ensure long-term climate adaptation after the grant period. The final phase of work will involve preparatory work leading to the implementation of climate adaptations initiatives and the grant-funded staff person is requir¬¬ed to move activities from the planning stage to the implementation stage over the course of the grant period. In Year 1, the Recipient plans to:• Build public, political & staff awareness - create a functional working group of Owen Sound and Grey Sauble staff, hold a public information and gathering session and meet with council for their input• Create a steering committee and hold regular meetings to appropriately direct the project and engage appropriate staff• Create a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and GIS database• Create potential flood inundation maps based on DEM and assumed scenarios• Document consequences and prospects of impacts - for example where there is increased extreme weather, will an impact be flooding and what will the consequences of this flooding be. An inventory of these impacts will be created.• Create inventory of infrastructure affected under different inundation scenarios and general climate change impacts• Create HIRA risk assessment where feasible (areas where flood mapping is available) and identify opportunities - a risk and opportunity matrices will be created, steps will follow well established Hazard Identification Risk Assessment steps from Emergency Management Ontario• Obtain community knowledge and gather scientific knowledge to create a climate change policy research paper comparing other Municipalities & their climate change plans• Initiate an internal engagement plan for EMS, Planning, works and other staff based on work complete in phase one and explore how to move forward on Climate Change Response Planning - this will included discussions of the risk matrices, current processes, identify gaps• Begin staff education program on the results of phase one (mapping, risks, research) In Year 2, the Recipient intends to:• Evaluate municipality's adaptive capacity - the matrices of risks and opportunities will be analyzed. • Continue staff engagement with EMS, Planning, works and other staff based on work complete in phase one. Explore how to move forward on Climate Change Response Planning and address gaps. • Create listing of potential projects and initiatives that are feasible for the City. Score, Prioritize and separate these into main categories. This step includes internal and public consultation for feedback and engagement.• Establish/specify prioritized adaptation planning principles: Begin with preliminary list of policies and actions, include gap analysis to determine what fits and can be funded etc, assign responsibilities to act• Write detailed climate adaptation plan for development & future initiatives within the city based the results of staff, public and council engagement.• Prepare council education piece and present to council & seek approval of plan• Create an implementation plan• Incorporate the plan into policy and budgets• Create information for and hold workshops and/or education on climate change adaptation and the City's plan for public