Data, Dialogue, and Storytelling: The Summit's Core Theme

On March 2nd & 3rd, Martina and Sam joined hundreds of planners, designers, policymakers, and community leaders at the BC Climate Resilience Summit in Vancouver. Over two days of conversations, presentations, and panels, one message came through clearly: climate resilience depends on how openly we share knowledge, communicate risk, and act together across disciplines.

Key Takeaways from the BC Climate Resilience Summit

A few presentations were particularly thought-provoking for our team:

Resilience is a verb. Mayor Richard Ireland of Jasper, a community that knows loss firsthand, challenged attendees to stop treating resilience as a fixed system. Preparation, community support, and recovery are ongoing work. Resilience is something you do, not something you have.

Land use decisions have long memories. Presentations on watershed health made clear how choices made decades ago, such as clearcut logging are shaping flood risk today. The built environment doesn't exist in isolation from the natural one.

Better data, better decisions. New approaches to climate risk mapping and cross-sector data sharing are opening up possibilities for more informed, proactive planning, exactly the kind of work we want to be part of.

AI as a tool for adaptation. There was genuine excitement around AI's potential to support climate modelling, risk analysis, and decision-making. Not as a silver bullet, but as a meaningful tool in a larger toolkit, despite reservations around the emissions and water usage of data centre buildings.

Applying Climate Resilience Insights to Sustainable Design

The climate crisis doesn't respect professional silos. Architects, engineers, ecologists, planners, and policymakers all have a role to play and the solutions that will actually work are the ones built across those boundaries.

We left the summit energised and with a sharper lens on how to apply these insights to the resilient design and planning work we do every day.