Metro Vancouver Conference Day

This session is a collaboration between the City of Surrey and City of Delta, as they work to complete the Living Dike Pilot project.
​A single jurisdiction cannot achieve flood protection. Rather, flood resiliency needs a collaborative approach, considering floods do not see our jurisdictional boundaries. Working together to pilot and test nature-based solutions can provide insightful information and help us better understand what works and what does not.

This session shares Vancouver’s strategy to strengthen water system resilience and recover lost revenue from unmetered leaks. In 2024, an estimated 20 per cent of the city’s drinking water—valued at $20 million—was lost to leakage. With a growing population and increasing climate pressure on water demand, this level of loss is unsustainable. Through the lens of Vancouver’s Water Demand Management Strategy, the session will highlight key system challenges, relevant metrics, and the rationale behind targeted investments to enable financially sound, data-driven decisions to recover lost water that can support future housing needs without increasing overall demand.

The Regional Public Works Mutual Aid Agreement serves as a critical framework for collaboration among local and regional authorities during major emergency situations. Attendees will gain insights about the importance of mutual aid in ensuring coordinated emergency response.

Wastewater is rich in low-carbon energy that displaces fossil fuels. Learn how Metro Vancouver and members can recover green energy from the wastewater system, now and in the future.

This session will share insights on Metro Vancouver’s response to date on the introduction of the US tariffs and their potential impact, particularly on procurement, contract management and operations for the liquid waste and water utilities. Colin Meldrum is a member of the Department Operating Centre coordinating processes in response to the impact of the tariffs.

Metro Vancouver is updating its solid waste management plan, building on the strengths of the current plan to work toward a thriving region where nothing is wasted and resources are valued.
In this two-part session, a​ttendees will preview and provide feedback on proposed actions for the plan that will require close collaboration between Metro Vancouver and member jurisdictions.

Robb Lukes and Nick Mead-Fox will discuss the City of Vancouver’s work to make Green Infrastructure (GI) the new “business-as-usual” for City rights-of-way. The session will begin with an overview of the types and quantities of Green Infrastructure systems in the City, and will include an overview of new GI technical standards, progress with technical and institutional barriers, outstanding challenges for implementation, GI financing methods, and alignments with City and Regional strategies and goals.

The Metro Vancouver region is exposed to several major natural hazards of concern, with seismic representing the most significant disaster risk. This session will showcase some early applications of a new suite of seismic hazard maps through three case study lenses: OCP, critical infrastructure/asset management and open-source, city-wide risk modelling. These 29 maps represent nearly a decade of effort from the scientific community and provide better hazard information than has ever existed before for the region in three categories: shaking, landslide and liquefaction.

Metro Vancouver is updating its solid waste management plan, building on the strengths of the current plan to work toward a thriving region where nothing is wasted and resources are valued.
In this two-part session,​ attendees will preview and provide feedback on proposed actions for the plan that will require close collaboration between Metro Vancouver and member jurisdictions.​