HOW CAN PUBLIC WORKS BUILD A RESILIENT FUTURE FOR HAMILTON IN A WORLD THAT IS RAPIDLY CHANGING AROUND US?
Project Description: In the Public Works Department at the City of Hamilton, we recognize that climate change is a dynamic and ever shifting issue that requires big picture ideas, disruptive innovations, and dramatic changes to our core business processes.. We are committed to doing all we can to implement the transformational change needed to build a more resilient future for Hamilton.
In January of 2020 we unveiled a comprehensive Climate Resiliency Program for Public Works that will guide our future as it relates to developing a more resilient and climate positive future for our work.
The list below represents key opportunities to move the development of the Climate Resiliency Program forward and represents some of the most challenging issues that we are facing today. We are excited to work with ambitious, driven, and motivated minds to accelerate the next generation of climate resiliency in Hamilton.
1. Lesson’s learning: How a community’s response to a pandemic can be applied to managing the climate crisis
2. Establish a toolkit of baseline calculations that relate to climate resiliency and GHG reduction that staff can integrate into their projects, business cases, funding applications, and use to assess the climate resiliency status of their work
3. Our new brave world: An outlook on the status and prioritization of environmental protection measures in a post COVID world
4. Develop a program that can integrate scenario projection, trend analysis, and futures research into climate resiliency decision making and prioritization
5. An analysis of natural environmental and ecosystem changes in Hamilton during social distancing
6. A system that will allow Public Works Departments across municipalities to collaborate and manage responses and decision making during a pandemic.
7.Redesign how Public Works develops business cases and sells climate positive projects
8. An active transportation and recreation network that can function and thrive during a pandemic and in the post pandemic world
9. A post secondary partnership and engagement network for the Public Works Climate Resiliency Program
10. A scenario projection tool that is capable of predicting responses to municipal climate and emergency response decisions
11. Establish a system to scan the horizon of activities in Public Works and the community and collect data that relates to climate resiliency. System will operate on an annual basis with data used to operate the Public Works Climate Resiliency Program successfully.
City Staff: Arlen Leeming, Senior Project Manager, Sustainability
Deliverables: Primary Research (i.e. conducting surveys and/or collecting data), Secondary Research (i.e. review of literature and finding information from books and online), Feasibility Study, Business Case, Policy Paper, design and/or event or workshop.
Project Start Date/ Availability: Fall 2020 (September-December)
Location: City-Wide
City wide City Strategy Priority: Community Engagement and Participation, Economic Prosperity and Growth, Healthy and Safe Communities, Clean and Green, Build Environment and Infrastructure, Culture and Diversity and Our People and Performance.