Thinking Fast and Slow in the ROW, Mission Possible Strategies to Make Room for Bike Lanes and Bioswales in a Crowded Environment
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OPWA Right of Way Management Conference, Ajax, Ontario, November 13, 2018 Keynote Address by Robert Muir, Manager, Stormwater, City of Markham The presentation "Thinking Fast and Slow in the ROW, Mission Possible Strategies to Make Room for Bike Lanes and Bioswales in a Crowded Environment" explores strategic infrastructure investment planning and cost-effective asset management for public assets. The cost efficiency assessment of various mitigation measures is explored using benefit cost analysis in the context of Markham's comprehensive city-wide Flood Control Program. The program includes many projects that demonstrate a high return on investment (ROI) for flood risk reduction, making them eligible for Infrastructure Canada's Disaster Mitigation Adaptation Fund (DMAF) grant funding.
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Thinking Fast and Slow in the ROW, Mission Possible Strategies to Make Room for Bike Lanes and Bioswales in a Crowded Environment
- 1. Woodbine 1 OPWA Right of Way Management Conference Ajax, Ontario, November 13, 2018 Thinking Fast and Slow in the ROW Mission Possible Strategies to Make Room for Bike Lanes and Bioswales in a Crowded Environment Robert J. Muir, M.A.Sc., P.Eng. Manager, Stormwater, City of Markham
- 2. Woodbine Flood Constraints in the ROW (August 19, 2005) 2
- 3. Woodbine ROW Infrastructure Back-up (July 16, 2017) 3
- 4. The Solution (After) • 30 year program • $234 M cost 4
- 6. It’s Even Crowded for Staging 6
- 7. Thinking Fast and Slow • Daniel Kahneman’s best-selling book summarizes decades of research into thinking – how we frame and solve problems, and the heuristic biases can cloud effective thinking. 7
- 8. Thinking Fast and Slow • Fast • Errors due to heuristic biases, or “short-cuts” in problem solving. 8 • Slow • Needed for today’s complex, constrained, and conflicted design challenges.
- 10. • Capacity upgrades up to 400% required to meet today’s 100 year level or service. Existing 900 mm dia. (2 yr) New 1800 mm dia. (100 yr) Why Are New Sewers Bigger ? Are They Big Enough? But what about Climate Change? Its not big enough !
- 11. Media and “Insurance Facts” on Bigger Storms 11 • Many statements about more extreme rainfall that would make sewers bigger come from: i) the insurance industry, and ii) some conservation authorities. • A 2012 report called “Telling the Weather Story” for the Insurance Bureau of Canada stated: “Weather events that used to happen every 40 years are now happening once every 6 years in some regions in the country.”
- 12. Media and “Insurance Facts” on Bigger Storms 12 • Main author from the University of Western, directed me to the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR) for the data. • ICLR director shared future climate predictions research papers, and asked for patience to find the Engineering Climate Dataset data referenced in the report (past data). • Months went by …
- 13. The real data … on YouTube 13
- 14. Just a Concept … a “Bell Curve” shift … no data 14www.cityfloodmap.com ?
- 15. Real Data Trends on Extreme Rainfall – Lower Intensities Insurance Bureau of Canada “Telling the Weather Story” Increase ? (but no data) Environment Canada Data Maximum Rain Decreasing (statistically significant over 6 to 24 hrs) 15
- 16. What it Means to Sewer and Pond Design Conceptual shift in a SHORT duration intensity would increase sewer sizes 16 Conceptual shift in a LONG duration intensity would increase pond & storage volumes
- 17. www.cityfloodmap.com Less Extreme Rain at Many Ontario Stations Too • Stations with 45+ years of record and recent data. • More rain decreases than rain increases. • S. Ont. twice as many significant decreases. 17http://www.cityfloodmap.com/2016/01/climate-change-ontario-short-duration.html Significant Decr. Decrease Increase Significant Incr. Source: Environment Canada Engineering Climate Dataset ftp://ftp.tor.ec.gc.ca/Pub/Engineering_Climate_Dataset/IDF/ Idf_v2-3_2014_12_21_trends.txt in IDF_Additional_Additionnel_v2.30.zip
- 18. Few statistically significant increases in Canada • 5-minute rainfall maxima have significant increases at only 2.7% of climate stations. • 93% of trends are insignificant or ‘no data’. • A whole lotta nothin’ goin’ on 18 Significantly Down 3% Significantly Up 4%2.7%
- 20. Rain Intensity Trends – Lower in Southern Ontario • Lower observed annual maximums cause IDF values to decrease. • Toronto City “Bloor Street” trends lower for all durations & all return periods. • Design standard ‘old’ IDF is conservative. http://www.cityfloodmap.com/2016/01/toronto-climate-change-extreme-rainfall.html www.cityfloodmap.com Source: Environment Canada Engineering Climate Dataset ftp://ftp.tor.ec.gc.ca/Pub/Engineering_Climate_Dataset/IDF/ Up to 2007 per Dataset v2.3, to 2003 per Dataset v1, to 1990 per hardcopy records 20 Toronto IDF Trends (5 Min) ID 6158355 (Toronto City) Return Period (Years) Intensity (mm/hr) Change 1990 2007 1990 - 2007 2 113.9 109.2 -4.1% 10 189.6 180.1 -5.0% 25 227.7 215.8 -5.2% 100 284 268.5 -5.5%
- 21. Data Facts Comes Out in Media & Marketing • Insurance ‘facts’ & other infographics: 21 • Data facts from ECCC: – “Lack of a detectable trend signal” (Atmosphere-Ocean, 2014) – Advertising Standards Canada complaint resolutions 2015-2018 (no rain shift data) – “No significant change in rainfall events over several decades” (CBC letter, 2015) – “ECCC studies have not shown evidence to support statement” (Cdn Underwriter, 2016) – “If this is used as the basis for statements about actual changes in extreme rainfall in Canada, then I would have concerns.” (personal communication ECCC, 2018) http://https://www.slideshare.net/RobertMuir3/storm-intensity-not-increasing-factual-review-of-engineering-datasets
- 22. • Capacity upgrades up to 400% required to meet today’s 100 year level or service. Its big enough and has a safety fact because intensities have been decreasing. Existing 900 mm dia. (2 yr) New 1800 mm dia. (100 yr) Are Sewers Big Enough? YES ! But what about Climate Change? Its not big enough !
- 23. Only Milli Vanilli “Blame It On The Rain”
- 24. That’s Crazy Talk Rob ! Flood Damages Are Up !!! 24
- 25. Insurance Industry “Fact”: • “Water Damage” is key driver to growing costs after 2008 http://http://assets.ibc.ca/Documents/Resources/IBC-Natural-Infrastructure-Report-2018.pdf
- 26. Not long ago, in many cities not far away ….
- 29. The Floods Awaken - A New Hope for Cost-Effective Investment in Flood Management Infrastructure
- 30. Have the floods “awakened” ?
- 31. Look at some data we must $400 M / yr > $1 B / yr CatIQ Data “various company surveys” ?
- 32. Flood, water, storm perils … 2013 is a rare large event 2013 $40k* loss per home not ‘average’
- 33. Water damage % is decreasing 34.0 % of Total Losses 31.7%
- 34. “Fear is the path to the dark side.”
- 35. What’s Going On? …..Thinking Fast 35 "People are not accustomed to thinking hard, and are often content to trust a plausible judgment that comes to mind." Daniel Kahneman, American Economic Review 93 (5) December 2003, p. 1450
- 36. Thinking Fast vs. Thinking Slow 36 • Weather events that happened every 40 years happening every 6 years. • Water damage a key driver to increasing insured losses. • New normal. • Data shows lack of detectable trend signal in rainfall intensities. • Data shows water damage only 1/3 of losses and is a decreasing percentage. • Same old extremes.
- 37. What Is Causing More Flooding? Urbanization http://www.cityfloodmap.com/2016/08/land-use-change-drives-urban-flood-risk.html 37
- 38. What Is Causing More Flooding? Urbanization http://www.cityfloodmap.com/2016/08/land-use-change-drives-urban-flood-risk.html 38
- 39. What Is Causing More Flooding? Urbanization http://www.cityfloodmap.com/2016/08/land-use-change-drives-urban-flood-risk.html 39
- 40. What Is Causing More Flooding? Urbanization http://www.cityfloodmap.com/2016/08/land-use-change-drives-urban-flood-risk.html 40
- 41. What Else Is Causing More Flooding? Deeper Finished Basements. https://www.cityfloodmap.com/2018/07/basement-underpinning-and-sewer-back-up.html 41
- 42. But we have unprecedented flood events, Rob! 42
- 43. Metrolinx said this 2013 flood was unprecedented http://http://www.cityfloodmap.com/2015/12/toronto-go-train-flood-avoidable-july-8.html 43
- 44. 2017 Lake Ontario Levels Unprecedented? 44 2017 1973
- 45. http://www.cityfloodmap.com/2017/09/toronto-island-flooding-2017-were-lake.html 74 74.2 74.4 74.6 74.8 75 75.2 75.4 75.6 75.8 1915 1925 1935 1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 2015 MonthlyLevel(m) Lake Ontario Historical May - August Levels May Average August Average Source: 1918-2016 http://www.tides.gc.ca/C&A/network_means-eng.html 2017 http://tides-marees.gc.ca/C&A/pdf/Bulletin1708.pdf May 5 cm above record August not a record 45
- 46. We have always had flooding Engineers don’t let that stop them in in their quests … 46
- 47. What about adding green infrastructure like bioswales into the right of way? 47
- 48. 48 Bioswales may not look so nice in practice …
- 49. 49 Green infrastructure needed to restore water balance
- 50. 50 But creek baseflows have been going up for decades ?!? Baseflows Increasing for 50 years Baseflows Increasing for 50 years
- 51. 51 Conservation Authority Says “Common Thought” Is Inaccurate • “At all but two gauging stations, a positive or upward trend was observed. These upward trends vary depending on the watershed, ranging from 2% in the Don and Etobicoke watersheds and up to 45% in the Rouge. These overall increases to baseflow volumes are contrary to the common thought that increased impervious cover leads to reduced baseflow” http://www.ctcswp.ca/wp- content/uploads/2015/07/RPT_20150723_Feb2015_TRSPA_PUAR_Chap3_HiRe z.pdf
- 52. 52 “Excessive costs alone shall not be considered an acceptable constraint” Green infrastructure saves money ? Then Why Say That?
- 53. 53 Green infrastructure saves money ? .. in rural Arkansas http://www.cityfloodmap.com/2017/09/toronto-island-flooding-2017-were-lake.html No curbs and sewers “save money” Is this a typical setting in Ontario? Does it meet Places to Grow densities?
- 54. 54 What about here in the GTA ?
- 55. 55 City of Toronto. Fairford and Coxwell. http://https://sustainabletechnologies.ca/app/uploads/2017/08/Fairford-Parkette-Case-Study_2017.pdf Ontario and US Project Costs: https://www.cityfloodmap.com/2018/07/green-infrastructure-capital-and.html
- 56. 56 Ontario Costs – Over $500,000 per Hectare (same as US) Cost for LID higher than traditional centralized technol- ogies Grey / Central Green / Distributed
- 57. Flood Control Program - Markham 0.1 1 10 100 1000 10000 Standards Downspout Prgm. Backwater Valve Pgm. San.Sewer Upgrades Stm. Sewer Upgrades Green Infr. Retrofit Cost($M) < $0.1 M
- 58. Flood Control Program - Markham 0.1 1 10 100 1000 10000 Standards Downspout Prgm. Backwater Valve Pgm. San.Sewer Upgrades Stm. Sewer Upgrades Green Infr. Retrofit < $0.1 M Grey Infrastructure Benefit / Cost = 2.0 Insured = 5.5 Total Green Infrastructure Benefit / Cost = 0.1 Insured = 0.3 Total Best Practices No Regrets Policies & Programs High ROI Approved Program $ 263 M $2.19 B for 25% of city
- 59. Conclusions • Crowded, the Right of Way it is • To Identify necessary infrastructure improvements critical “Thinking Slow”, we must do • On your Mission Possible Right of Way Strategy, may the force be with you • The path to the dark side, “Thinking Fast” it is
- 60. Questions ? Robert J. Muir, M.A.Sc., P.Eng. rmuir@markham.ca Blog: www.CityFloodMap.com Podcast: Open During Construction on iTunes Twitter: @RobertMuir_PEng Web: www.markham.ca OPWA Right of Way Management Conference Ajax, Ontario, November 13, 2018
- 61. Woodbine 61 OPWA Right of Way Management Conference Ajax, Ontario, November 13, 2018 Thinking Fast and Slow in the ROW Mission Possible Strategies to Make Room for Bike Lanes and Bioswales in a Crowded Environment Robert J. Muir, M.A.Sc., P.Eng. Manager, Stormwater, City of Markham
Editor's Notes
- Good morning everyone, thanks for having me here today. I’m Robert Muir, the Manager of Stormwater at the City of Markham. My presentation today is going to touch on a few aspects of my life: Firstly my work, my day job at the City of Markham where I am responsible for our Flood Control Program – a quarter billion dollar program of putting big pipes in the ground to prevent flooding. And secondly – something that has grown as part of the my life in the past 3 ½ years – that is research into the science and economics behind features like bioswales to manage stormwater in a crowded ROW. What I’d like to share from this is how my work and research has come together to guide our Mission Possible Strategy to focus strategically on what we need to accommodate in the right of way to mange flooding and stormwater. This research has now grown into a role in advocacy on policies on climate risk assessment and infrastructure adaptation. Why is climate change important to a discussion on things we make room for in a right of way? Well because bike lanes are intended to support mitigation (get cars off the road), bioswales are promoted for adaptation – to help deal with bigger storms in the future.
- First – some background - what are some of the flooding and stormwater problems in our right of ways in Markham? Well, like in other cities, due to rudimentary 1940’s and 50’s subdivision grading and flood hazard management we can have this in a big storm. Roads become rivers. We didn’t design systems to handle extreme rain. Period.
- And in older areas built before the 1980’s especially, sewers can back up and flood basements too. This is not always caused by sewers but they are a significant contributor. x Recently we experienced extreme but spatially more isolated storms that caused flooding in older service areas. Hundreds of flooded basements in one storm.
- What are we doing about it? The solution to this challenge in Markham is our Flood Control Program - a 30 year 288 million dollar capital program for storm sewer upgrades – add to that about 10 percent more for sanitary sewer upgrades. This is us celebrating the first storm sewer upgrade contract completion to give us 100 year storm sewers in Bayview Glen. Its sunny. Everyone is smiling. It looks easy. Its fun – the mayor even played in the pipe. Its OK we let him out.
- So the reality is more complex. On the left is West Thornhill Phase 2B. Small storm sewer pipes being replaced with bigger pipes. Our new big pipe has to go under a large high pressure gas main. If we are not going under gas lines we may be going under regional watermains too. On the right is West Thornhill Phase 1B with small sewers being replaced with much bigger ones. And up to 8 metres deep. So the reality is that it is crowded in the ROW.
- We are lucky if we can stockpile soil and stage from an adjacent park. This is Grandview Park But often it is challenging to find space for staging construction projects. The work is welcomed by the public to improve flood resiliency, but it is quite disruptive over the short term. So the takeaway is that we should be doing this type of work, or other work, including bioswales and bike lanes, where it makes the most sense. Where we demonstrate significant improvements in level of service and at a reasonable cost. If you have read Ontario’s 2017 long term infrastructure plan that is a theme too.
- Before I get into how we fit everything in the right of way I want to share the fundamental thought process for deciding what goes in the right of way. Its called Thinking Slow. What is thinking fast and slow? Thinking fast and slow is a best selling book by psychologist Daniel Kahneman – he won a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002. The book summarizes decades of research into thinking – how we frame and solve problems, and the heuristic biases that can cloud effective thinking. And to fit everything in a crowded right of way we need effective thinking – first to figure out if we need it and second to figure out how big it has to be.
- More on this thinking fast and slow. System 1 is a Fast, automatic thinking that we do for everyday task – it can be error prone because it has intrinsic heuristic biases – mental short cuts. Its OK for quick everyday decisions. System 2 is Thinking Slow, effortful for complex decisions like those facing my water industry and all of us juggling what we have to fit in the right of way. Results of slow thinking are reliable and that’s what we need to solve complex problems.
- This is a right of way with a bioswale shown on the left to help soak in and filter runoff from the road. And bike lanes added in too. It’s complex, constrained and crowded. Thinking slow helps me decide what do I need to add in – strategically, essentially, financially sustainably And. More importantly. Helps me decide what can I do without? Following a clear evidence-based decision making approach. I’ll come back to bioswales but first I want to talk about the big pipes that we are putting in the ground under the surface of our ROWs. And I’ll share the slow thinking that we have done to make sure that they are the right size. Note: Image is 15th Street NW, Washington DC.
- Why are new sewers bigger? Are They Big Enough? In our first contract the outlet pipe increased from a 900 mm diameter to a 1800 mm diameter. 400% area and capacity upgrade. Why Are New Sewers Bigger ? Its because the original subdivision in the 1950 didn’t design for overland flow in big storms – we have to take that runoff form big storms and put it in a pipe. That to prevent it from leaving the ROW and running across peoples lots. But the public asked “Is it big enough?” - what about climate change and making pipes big enough for future “100 year storms”, the big rare storms that cause flooding? I didn’t know. And with that question so started a 3+ year journey of Slow Thinking about what should and can go in the ROW to adapt to climate change.
- So more extreme rainfall.
- The source of the statement was stated to be Environment Canada’s Intensity-Duration-Frequency Tables and Graphs – which is not general weather data, it’s the exact extreme rainfall data we use to design sewers. Its called the Engineering Climates Datasets. So I thought “Great!”. They can send that data to me and I can see if Markham’s design standards are high enough to account for this climate change rainfall intensity shift. Problem solved. So I contacted the main author .. … months went by. It was funny.
- And then I found this on YouTube – the main author presented the data on weather frequency shifts in the Telling the Weather Story report at The Empire Club of Canada. I thought – Great! I found it.
- But what I found was not any data - just a conceptual, theoretical bell curve shift – no real data at all. The Environment Canada “data” was just the concept of shift a standard normal bell curve - 1 standard deviation to the right. The blue line becoming the orange line. And as Dr McBean explains in the video a shift in means makes a shift in extremes in the tails of the distribution. So I checked the math – a standard deviation shift does make a 40 year storm happen every 6 years. Exactly. But its not data – it’s a theory. So should I make all of Markham’s sewers bigger because of a bell curve shift? I decided to dig into the data myself.
- This is the longest record of extreme rainfall in Toronto. Its from the Bloor Street gauge downtown. Environment and Climate Change Canada in version 2.3 of the Engineering Climate Datasets started to plot the trend of annual observed rainfall over various durations. Green lines show real observed decreases in Toronto from 5 minutes to 24 hours – annual maximum rainfall is decreasing in Toronto. Red lines are the “Weather Story” statement that 40 year storms are happening every 6 years story – a one standard deviation increase.
- What does this shift mean to how we design infrastructure? If short duration intensities go up, sewers get bigger. If long duration intensities go up, ponds get bigger. So this is a critical piece of data. But these graphs are just Toronto – so I started to looked across Ontario too
- This table shows Ontario rain intensity trends at many long term stations collecting data for over 45 years – green means annual maximum rain event volumes are down – red mean up. There are slightly more downward than upward trends. Southern Ontario has twice as many statistically significant decreasing rain intensity trends as increasing ones. Less sever rain. I put a link to the data and analysis. This does not agree with the Insurance Bureau of Canada “Weather Story”.
- And then I analyzed the same data from across all of Canada. Few significant increases. This is for over 500 stations. Green means rain intensities are down and orange up with weak trends. For 5 minute durations – the bar on the left there are only 2.7% of stations with significant increase. And some of those could be random. There is a whole lot of nothin’ goin’ one here in the data.
- Then I charted it all and made online GIS maps to show it. There are links to my blog. As many annual observed rain intensities go down so have the derived local design values
- Looking at rainfall design intensities, our Markham IDF curve is based on the Toronto Bloor Street gauge – these intensities have been trending down, over 5% since 1990. So that means there is a safety factor, old rain intensity IDF chart is conservative. So this is our staring point. And I took all this back to the ICLR and said “guys, your Telling the Weather Story” was just a story. A conceptual bell curve shift. No real data. Do you think you should dial that back? After all you have the chief economist from TD bank repeating the 40 to 6 year shift, the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario too. They ignored me. So I went to the Insurance Bureau of Canada who commissioned the Weather Story report and they said. Rob, Gordon McBean is a respected scientist – we are not interested in your data. I’m not kidding.
- So I collected more data and engineering analysis to see what was behind every single infographic and general powerpoint claim on extreme weather that I could find. The stuff on the left. Facts are on the right. The extreme rain trend facts in Canada were actually published in Atmosphere-Ocean in an Environment Canada paper in 2014 – it says ‘lack of a detectable trend signal’ for observed rainfall in Canada - I’ve included a link to the paper. And because IBC would not correct their report or website or even acknowledge the issue. I went to Ad Standards Canada and through them 3 of our largest insurance companies have removed the 40 to 6 year frequency shift from their web sites – no data – it is not accurate information to sell insurance. No links because the settlements are confidential. And wherever I saw the Telling the Weather Story statement in the media I questioned the data source – the CBC Ombudsman and the editors of Canadian Underwriter have issued corrections to insurance industry statements in their stories now. Links to those letters and articles are here. And lastly – this year Environment Canada and Climate Change has this wrote me to say the “would have concerns” if the 40 to 6 year frequency shift was “used as the basis for statements about actual changes in extreme rainfall”. A link to that email is included too. So I’ve been doing this ‘correcting’ for 3 years. 2 weeks ago the CBC Ombudsman offered to interview me on this topic to share the data facts and to balance out the insurance industry messages.
- Back to this. Are Markham Sewers Big Enough? Yes – and there is a safety factor in our design because in southern Ontario rain intensities have been decreasing. Our deign curves are based on older higher rainfall intensities. So I kind of cheated right? Instead of presenting how I fit bigger sewers in a crowded right of way I showed how I using a lot of data and critical evaluations and determined that I did not have to make sewers bigger for bigger storms at all. Yes – I make them bigger to account for today’s higher design standards – but not for any change in rain.
- You know these guys? Who is it. Milli Vanilli - right. And what do they do? “Blame it on the rain”
- Now you could say. “That’s Crazy Talk Rob ! Flood Damages Are Up ! The insurance industry says that all the time.
- Like the IBC in a recent natural infrastructure study said about “water damage is the key driver behind these growing costs” Actually the Insurance Bureau of Canada did share with me their flood damage data this summer to check this “fact”. When I did the lunch time entertainment here last time I talked about trying to get people excited about infrastructure – dancing about it – celebrating it. I came up with a new way to make these dry discussions more engaging using pop culture so…
- Lets see how we can explore this question of increasing water damages in a fun way
- As my alter ego “Engineer Master Storm-whacker” I have been speaking on what is sweeping the galaxy in terms of fixing ‘Storm Warts’, the blemishes in our infrastructure systems under extreme rain, and show how to do it in the most cost-effective way.
- As part of that I look at the question “Have the floods awakened?” like the insurance industry says To answer that.. Look at some data, we must
- My droid R2-Vac-Poo pulled some loss data together. Pre 2008 400 million losses a year. Post 2008 1 billion - Seems like a big jump – You have probably seen this before because it is in all the Intact Centre and IBC reports and presentations on adaptation. CLICK but these are 2 vastly different datasets which could explain a lot of the difference and the trend. And it includes fires. What about flooding only? We have to use the engineering force and dig deeper.
- R2 has pulled up the flood only losses. In recent years where the data is reliable flood losses are flat except for 2013. So while the insurance industry may use 2013 to estimate average damages, those are actually an extreme and 10 times above the recent annual losses.
- And have flood losses awakened? Not really. Up to 2008, water damage was 34% of total losses. After 2008? Less.
- Fear is the path to the dark side. And we are being bombarded by messaging that water damage is going up – Thinking Slow with data says “No”, not really.
- So its really easy to hear that temperatures are up so in theory rainfall intensities are up too. What many people do is System 1 Fast thinking – that can have an availability bias. Which means instead of actually looking at rainfall statistics, instead of actually looking at water damage data, people think – can I recall many big floods, maybe even dramatic ones – if you can recall a lot, you think it is increasing. Its an availability bias.
- This is all about thinking fast and thinking slow. On the left fast thinking. No statistics. No analysis. And everyone declares a new normal – based only on anecdotes. On the right – thinking slow and methodically, gives opposite results. We don’t have a rainfall crisis and are dealing with the same old extremes. No new normal to size our sewers. Slow thinking is what we need to characterize issues and solve problems.
- So if rain is not more severe why are losses are up? Hydrology is one key driver. And urbanization change has occurred at a considerable, measurable pace with almost 1000% more urban area in the Rouge Watershed from the mid 60’s to the 1999. So same old rain with more urbanization means more flooding. This image shows simlar growth across southern Ontario over that period. Purple is urban areas in 1966 and pink is 2000 – huge expansion in urban areas.
- So if rain is not more severe why are losses are up? Hydrology is one key driver. And urbanization change has occurred at a considerable, measurable pace with almost 1000% more urban area in the Rouge Watershed from the mid 60’s to the 1999. So same old rain with more urbanization means more flooding. This image shows simlar growth across southern Ontario over that period. Purple is urban areas in 1966 and pink is 2000 – huge expansion in urban areas.
- So if rain is not more severe why are losses are up? Hydrology is one key driver. And urbanization change has occurred at a considerable, measurable pace with almost 1000% more urban area in the Rouge Watershed from the mid 60’s to the 1999. So same old rain with more urbanization means more flooding. This image shows simlar growth across southern Ontario over that period. Purple is urban areas in 1966 and pink is 2000 – huge expansion in urban areas.
- So if rain is not more severe why are losses are up? Hydrology is one key driver. And urbanization change has occurred at a considerable, measurable pace with almost 1000% more urban area in the Rouge Watershed from the mid 60’s to the 1999. So same old rain with more urbanization means more flooding. This image shows simlar growth across southern Ontario over that period. Purple is urban areas in 1966 and pink is 2000 – huge expansion in urban areas.
- What else? Deeper expensive finished basements. The number of underpinning permits in Toronto has skyrocketed since 2000. Deeper floods closer to the sewer when it surcharges – more frequent and more severe back-ups.
- Let’s unpack some of those. Can you recall many significant floods in the GTA or dramatic events?
- How about this? Metrolinx said this 2013 flood was unprecedented. But since the Richmond Hill line started running in the late 1970’s – trains have been stranded at the exact same spot. If Metrolinx looked at data – they would have found that 6 weeks before the July 8 2013 flood, a higher deeper flood happened right here – but it was a 3 AM with no trains running. This is more about train frequency than rain frequency. Do you know how many conferences I have been at where they use the GO train flood as evidence of a ‘new normal’?
- 2017 also had a dramatic event to feed our availability biases. Lots of people called 2017 lake levels unprecedented. Flooding Toronto island. Due to climate change. That thinking fast. We actually had flooding in the past as well. Thinking slow? What does the data show? Well we had high levels before too.
- In the 40s 50s and 70s. May 2017 was a few centimetres above the previous max August levels? We had those in the 40’s too.
- If we look to the past, we see we have always had extreme events and flooding. Engineers can’t predict the details but that doesn’t stop them in their everyday quests. Like getting to the beer store. Or upgrading infrastructure.
- What about adding green infrastructure like bioswales into the right of way? This is the new thing. Conservation authorities tell us they: One - look beautiful Two – we need them to restore the natural water balance and maintain stream baseflows And Three – they save us money. What are we finding with Thinking Slow?
- So green infrastructure looks nice. …in he artist rendering on the left. Its the Brampton County Court bioswale and this picture went to Council to approve and fund it. On the right is the real deal. Some stuff is growing in it but its not a flower garden though. Maybe it doesn’t look so beautiful.
- Regardless green infrastructure – like bioswales and raingardens – are supposedly needed to restore the water balance. Naturally – on the left – water used to soak into the ground before development, seep out into creeks, and maintain the flow in our creeks and feed our acquifers. With development – on the right - the rain and snowmelt runs off instead and creeks dry up. Creeks dry up.
- Thinking slow now. These are creek flows in Markham for the Rouge River. The red line is baseflows – going up since the 1960’s. BILD did a study to show the same thing in other TRCA watercourses.
- Green infrastructure saves money. Well we should be a little skeptical of that. And I was two years ago when the Ontario government released its first draft of the low impact development guidance manual. It would mandate green infrastructure on any linear infrastructure project in the right of way. And the draft report had this statement: Excessive costs alone shall not be considered an acceptable constraint. Usually if you save money you don’t need that kind of statement right? So for over 2 years I have been digging into green infrastructure costs and cost effectiveness.
- What I found was the cost saving examples the Ministry of Environment was using were for estate residential subdivisions in rural Arkansas. That is quarter acre lots where the quote “savings” were building it with a green ditch instead of storm sewers. So they saved money.
- In my neighbourhood in the east Toronto the city built this bioswale at Fairford and Coxwell.
- So I went on a quest to find all tender project costs in Ontario so I could see what green infrastructure would cost in Markham if we considered promoting this in all our right of ways. Some conservation authorities would not share their coast so I made an FOI request for the data, and got project costs from other municipalities in Ontario and this is what I compiled. This is a link to those unit costs and and Ontario-wide lifecycle cost analysis that shows green Ontario would cost over 15 billion dollars a year in depreciation and O&M costs. But to make this cost estimation hit home, and to look at the benefits of green infrastructure compared to conventional grey infrastructure pipes, Fabian Papa and I have conducted benefit cost analysis to see if green infrastructure is ‘worth it’. Could we prevent flooding and make the high cost worth it?
- So how do bioswales fit into Markham’s Flood Control Program considering cost and cost effectiveness. First what are the program components and cost – note the scale on the left is a log scale – costs go up a lot from left to right. We have standards and policies. Sanitary downspout disconnection program Backwater valve and sump pump subsidy program. Sanitary sewer upgrades Storm sewer upgrades And we evaluated green infrastructure retrofit costs AND BENEFITS.
- We can break our activities down into Best Practices – the No Regrets Policies and Programs, a million dollars each – they have high benefit cost ratio, maybe cost a few thousand dollars per hectare. CLICK Grey infrastructure, those are sanitary and storm sewer upgrades – 260 millions with a benefit-cost ratio of 2 to 5 depending if we use insured or total losses. CLICK – then Green infrastructure, which if we converted a quarter of the city would have a benefit cost ratio of 0.1 to 0.3. CLICK – We have 263 million approved in the overall program. An we consider green infrastructure only in the most strategic locations, as part of park revitalization and for one large naturalized pond retrofit costing 10’s of millions. CLICK – But we cannot justify spending over 2 billion dollars across the city, raise taxes 40%, to add rain gardens and bioswales in all old areas, along all the streets. When I delivered my Storm Warts presentation I said this: “These are not the technologies you are looking for.” Repeat after me – “these are not the technologies I’m looking for”. Its not an engineering mind trick, like a Jedi mind trick - it’s the facts. Thinking slow. Collecting data, Crunching numbers. Helps us make policy decisions on what we want in the right of way. What we need in the right of way. And we have to do that because: there is not enough money to spend on unnecessary and low-return infrastructure, green, grey or purple
- So some words of wisdom, spoken Yoda style Crowded the ROW it is – and because of that To Identify necessary infrastructure improvements critical “Thinking Slow”, we must do It could save a city hundreds of millions of dollars on pipe upgrades by critically looking at rain intensity trends It could save a couple billion by avoiding green infrastructure bioswales everwhere where Baseflows are not dropping and water balance restoration is not critical Return on investment calculations show other traditional servicing solutions are more cost effective On your Mission Possible Right of Way Strategy, may the force be with you THINKING SLOW is that force – so perhaps consider bioswales strategically in only the most critical areas, where you can afford it, where you can justify it with systems wide performance The path to the dark side, “Thinking Fast” it is It is unreliable to make big decisions on what should go in a right of way by Thinking Fast The media and insurance companies have many “Thinking Fast” messages out there today, so be very careful on accepting “Insurance Facts” or media declarations of new normal, or assumptions and “common thought” about baseflow stresses, that do not have data support
- I’m Robert Muir, Manager of Stormwater at the City of Markham Please read my blog – Cityfloodmap.com there are some links for those who want to do a deep dive on my topics here. I also have a podcast on city building – its called Open During Construction, its on iTunes Or follow me on twitter I’d be pleased to answer a few questions?
- Good morning everyone, thanks for having me here today. I’m Robert Muir, the Manager of Stormwater at the City of Markham. My presentation today is going to touch on a few aspects of my life: Firstly my work, my day job at the City of Markham where I am responsible for our Flood Control Program – a quarter billion dollar program of putting big pipes in the ground to prevent flooding. And secondly – something that has grown as part of the my life in the past 3 ½ years – that is research into the science and economics behind features like bioswales to manage stormwater in a crowded ROW. What I’d like to share from this is how my work and research has come together to guide our Mission Possible Strategy to focus strategically on what we need to accommodate in the right of way to mange flooding and stormwater. And I’ll share how this research has now grown into a role in advocacy on policies on climate risk assessment and infrastructure adaptation. Why is climate change important to a discussion on things we make room for in a right of way? Well because bike lanes are intended to support mitigation (get cars off the road), bioswales are promoted for adaptation – to help deal with bigger storms in the future.