Flooding in the Red River Basin – Lessons from Post Flood Activities

Flood of 1997 affected a large number of residents in the Red River Basin. Life disruption, economic damage, lengthy recovery process, physical and emotional trauma motivated a number of main initiatives to improve the level of preparedness in case of future floods. This review will focus on the involvement of the International Joint Commission (IJC). Personal experience is used in this review to emphasize a number of important lessons, of special relevance to Canadian portion of the basin, from the post flood activities. Level of preparedness for, and potential damage from future floods will benefit from focusing very serious effort on the improvement of the Canadian database, exchange of data with the U.S. and standardization of data collection, exchange and use. Tools for sustainable floodplain management are improving. However, the Red River Basin with its characteristics requires a special set of sophisticated tools that will enhance flood flow forecasting, planning of new flood control measures (structural and non-structural) and emergency operations of existing flood protection system. City of Winnipeg, being the largest population centre in the basin deserves a special attention. Additional protection of 670,000 people is required that will take into consideration temporal and spatial distribution of economic and social costs and benefits. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2003