“Global Water Futures – a transdisciplinary water research program providing solutions to water threats in an era of global change”

GWF aims to place Canada as a global leader in water science for cold regions and address the strategic needs of the Canadian economy in adapting to change and managing the risks of uncertain water futures and extreme events in a time of global change. The university-led, federally funded research program was designed strategically in 2016 in consultation with stakeholders to achieve three main goals: 1) to deliver new capability for providing disaster warning; 2) to diagnose change and predict water futures; and 3) to develop new

models, tools, and approaches to manage water-related risks. GWF’s research program is now fully developed, partnerships are functional, competitive funding allocations to projects and core teams are complete, an unprecedented team of research personnel is active, research infrastructure for GWF is established, and research is fully under way. This talk will show how GWF has improved the scientific-underpinning and, through new code and computer technologies, is delivering the fundamental modelling and prediction systems that can support disaster warning from floods, droughts, and water quality degradation episodes. It will note the scientific progress made in diagnosing the varied dimensions of changing water futures, how decision support models were built to predict and interpret this change and how information was mobilized to over 450 users to help develop solutions to managing water-related risk in a wide variety of sectors, communities and regions.

ASCE EWRI 2021 Virtual Congress