Managing natural infrastructures: a new approach to optimizing urban resilience
In the face of climate change, our cities must rethink their planning. Traditionnaly dominated by grey infrastructure (roads, buildings, sewers), they can enhance resilience by integrating more urban natural infrastructures. Trees, wetlands, waterways and green spaces play an essential role in providing numerous ecosystem services to populations, such as regulating temperature, reducing the risk of flooding and improving air quality.
With this in mind, the David Suzuki Foundation and Habitat have joined forces to highlight the crucial role of natural infrastructures in five major Canadian cities, and the risks to which they are exposed.
Photo credit: City of Saskatoon
Provide decision-makers with data to better manage natural assets and help citizens understand their benefits.
Extract from the platform for Quebec City.
Level of adaptation of public trees to future climatic conditions.
Habitat conducted in-depth analyses for five major Canadian cities: Québec City, Gatineau, Ottawa, Saskatoon and Vancouver. The process identified the natural assets within these territories, assessed their state of health, evaluated their benefits for citizens and examined the threats they face.
By also integrating socio-economic criteria, these analyses provide a better understanding of whether the benefits of natural infrastructures are equitably distributed within municipalities.
This work aims not only to equip land-use planners with tools for managing natural infrastructures, but also to provide citizens with an easy-to-use platform to understand the positive role that natural infrastructures can play in the city.
Interactive maps dedicated for each city allow users to view and download analysis results. The analyses are based on public data sources or data supplied by the cities themselves. Each analysis includes a text explaining the methodology used, as well as a metadata file summarizing key information iabout the produced geomatic layers.
Discover our analyses now and explore the data about your city's natural infrastructures!
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A few statistics to better understand nature in the city
Dozens of datasets were analyzed and cross-referenced to create an in-depth portrait of nature and its benefits within the five cities under study. Some statistics extracted from the platform are presented here to give an overview of natural infrastructures, their benefits and the risks to which they are exposed:
Canopy index
The canopy index measures the percentage of the urban surface covered by tree crowns. A high canopy index generally translates into a high provision of ecosystem services such as temperature regulation, improved air quality and flood mitigation.
* The datasets used to calculate the canopy index are not all from the same year.
For Quebec City, Gatineau, Ottawa and Vancouver, analyses are based on 2022-2023 data. For Saskatoon, datasets from 2007 and 2022 were used. For more information, please refer to the methodology.
Heat and cool islands
Heat and cold islands represent urban areas with higher or lower temperatures than surrounding non-urban areas. This indicator measures the percentage of urban territory classified as a heat or cool island. Natural infrastructures in cities help regulate temperatures and create cool island effects, enabling greater population resilience, especially during extreme heat waves that can put the most vulnerable groups at risk.
Improving air quality
This index designates the average quantity of atmospheric pollutants (ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and fine particles less than 2.5 microns) filtered each year by the urban canopy, contributing to improved air quality in the city and its positive effects on health.
Vulnerability of trees to future climate
Tree species planted in the past may unfortunately not be adapted to future climate conditions, putting the ecosystem services they provide at risk. This metric reflects the percentage of municipal trees that are likely to be adapted, sensitive or vulnerable (at risk) to their city's climate in 2050. Since a tree planted today will reach its full potential in several decades' time, it is crucial to choose species adapted to future climate conditions today.
About
About the David Suzuki Foundation
Founded in 1990, the David Suzuki Foundation is a Canadian environmental non-profit organization with offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. The Foundation aims to collaborate with many different people in Canada, including Indigenous leadership and communities, all governments, businesses and individuals to find solutions to create a sustainable Canada through scientific research, traditional ecological knowledge, innovative policy and legal solutions, communications and public engagement. Its mission is to protect nature’s diversity and the well-being of all life, now and for the future. The Foundation envisions a world where we all act every day on the understanding that we are interdependent with nature, and with each other.
The project was carried out for and funded by the David Suzuki Foundation.
About Habitat
Habitat is a Montreal-based environmental solutions company whose mission is to accelerate the ecological transition. It helps organizations in all sectors to integrate nature into their strategic decisions, thereby promoting the adoption of practices that strengthen their resilience in the face of climate change and contribute to the conservation of biodiversity. Comprising a team of highly qualified professionals in biology, geography, forestry and ecology, Habitat offers innovative solutions at the cutting edge of science.
Habitat led the project design, data collection, analysis and production of interactive maps.
Partner cities
Habitat and the David Suzuki Foundation would like to thank the cities of Québec, Gatineau, Ottawa, Saskatoon and Vancouver, who collaborated in various ways throughout the project, particularly by providing data sets and invaluable feedback on the platform's design.