The primary objectives of the conference are to delve into contemporary flood management issues such as:
 

1. Global Change Impacts: Explore the evolving patterns of extreme weather events, population growth, migration, and land use changes and their impact on flood frequency and intensity.

   Potential topics:

  • Advancements in flood mapping, including incorporation of climate change
  • Attribution of urban and Riverine Floods to climate change
  • Adaptation amidst increased flood disaster 
  • Dam break and dam break flooding under climate change
  • Changing risks of floods under climate change
  • Prevention of new risk creation
  • Compound inland and coastal floods

2. Resilience to Flooding: Focus on the capacity of communities, infrastructure, and ecosystems to endure, adapt to, and recover from the impacts of flooding events.

   Potential topics:

  • Early warnings for all
  • Reducing risks, enhancing resilience, strengthening weakness, and promoting transformation 
  • Flood resilience in least developed countries (as defined by UNFCC) 
  • Financing flood resilience.
  • Building flood resiliency through citizen engagement or application of citizen science.
  • Best approaches for enhanced flood resilience 
  • Citizen science as a tool to support flood risk assessment and management.
  • Risk assessment in ungauged/poorly gauged catchments (observation strategy; flood prediction)
  • Infrastructure risks and resilience under flooding
  • Uncertainty and causality evaluation in flood modelling
  • Flood insurance
  • Development of Canada’s private flood insurance market and work on a  government backstop for high risk property owner
  • Build back better (ex. pre-disaster plan)
  • Catastrophic floods associated with hurricanes, extratropical cyclones, and atmospheric rivers
  • Quantifying risks from compound pluvial, fluvial and coastal flooding at regional and large-scales 

3. Urban Flooding: Address the challenges posed by rapid urbanization, inadequate infrastructure, and urban planning in mitigating and managing floods in urban areas.

   Potential topics:

  • Drivers of urban and riverine floods
  • Urban floods as an integral component of urban water cycle
  • Urban flooding and stormwater management
  • Nature Based Solutions (NBS) for flood mitigation in urban areas
  • Compact city
  • Sponge city
  • Strategic planning and emergency response for urban flooding 
  • Flood impacts on the infrastructure
  • Flood impacts on critical infrastructure for current and future climate scenarios - understanding the cascading impacts   

4. Ecosystem-based Approaches: Highlight the role of natural ecosystems in flood prevention and management, emphasizing sustainable and nature-based solutions.

   Potential topics:

  • Nature-based solutions (modelling methods; understanding of their performance; economic benefits)
  • Restoration of riparian zones
  • Role of wetlands in flood management
  • Glacial lake outburst floods ( GLOFs)
  • Case studies (lessons learned) and community engagement in nature-based solutions
  • Flood-driven sediment transport and landscape changes

5. Data Integration and Modeling: Discuss advancements in data collection, analysis, and modeling for accurate flood prediction and risk assessment.

   Potential topics:

  • AI and machine learning in flood forecasting and flood risk analysis 
  • Multivariate modelling of floods:
  • Latest advancements in flood hazard and risk mapping using earth observations
  •  Recent advances in real-time flood forecasting (including the utilization of crowd-sourced data)
  • Advanced/emerging flood modelling techniques
  • use changes and their impact on flood frequency and intensity.)
  • The use of ‘new data’ in flood modelling (new observations; latest EO and in-situ; citizen data, big data etc.).
  • High-resolution datasets to predict/ forecast floods
  • Application of remote sensing in flood risk analysis, 
  • Development of a flood hazard databases

6. Policy and Governance: Examine the role of effective policies, governance structures, and international collaboration in mitigating the impacts of floods.

   Potential topics:

  • Closing the gap between research and decision making  (ex. transdisciplinary approach)
  • Governance and flood risk management actions
  • Innovative approaches to governance for floods and droughts management
  • The role of ‘new’ actors (incl. non-traditional service providers, social media etc) for forecasting, dissemination and warning
  • Community engagement for flood risk reduction and adaptation