17-22090 - Updating Climatic Data for the National Building Code of Canada and the Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code CSA S6 (17-22090)

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Updating Climatic Data for the National Building Code of Canada and the Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code CSA S6

Background

Canada’s climate is changing, and climate model projections suggest that greenhouse gas emissions will influence the climate for decades. Canada’s buildings and public infrastructure systems (bridges, roads, water and wastewater systems, transit, etc.) are designed based on historic data assuming a stationary climate, and were not designed to accommodate certain extreme weather events being attributed to climate change. As such, there is a growing risk of failure of buildings and infrastructure. Under the Pan-Canadian Climate Change Framework, Infrastructure Canada is providing $40M in funding to NRC to deliver the Climate-Resilient Buildings and Core Public Infrastructure (CRBCPI) Project over a 5 year period to integrate climate resiliency into building and infrastructure design guides and codes. The funding, which began in 2016-17, will support the integration of climate resilience into design guides, codes and related materials which will be the basis for future infrastructure builds and rehabilitation work in Canada.

Specific Context

A major activity under the CRBCPI project involves support for the update of code and standard referenced climate design data. In this effort NRC is working closely with Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) to provide climate design data suitable for potential adoption by the model National Building Code (NBC) and CSA’s Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code (CHBDC – CSA S6). The data will cover a range of future Canadian climate states, covering over 650 locations across Canada, and will address climate extremes: enabling designers of Canada buildings and infrastructure to design for the future rather than the past. In order to set a strong baseline for quantifying the impact of climate change, the project is also funding a major update to the design data (based on measured historic data) for locations currently referenced in the NBC and CHBDC. This data will be presented to the Canadian Commission on Building and Fire Codes (CCBFC) and CSA for consideration for inclusion or reference in future codes, standards and guidelines.

Scope and Purpose

The goal of this work is to work collaboratively with the NRC and the Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC) and Climate Research Division (CRD) of Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) to provide information about future climate change, as needed to assess future impacts and plan adaptation measures related to the NBC and CHBDC design values, and to update climate design data values based on historic data for selected locations in Canada as in Table C-2 of the National Building Code of Canada (NBC ) and Annex A3.1 of the Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code (CHBDC-CSA S6).

The proposed work would involve three substantial tasks:

Producing updated Climate Design Data for selected locations in Canada as in Table C-2 of the National Building Code of Canada (NBC) and Annex A3.1 of the Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code (CHBDC-CSA S6).

Supporting the efforts of ECCC in providing climate design data for future climate states.

Developing an improved mapping procedure for displaying design value isopleths on maps of Canada .