Evaluating a public–private data-sharing platform for improving flood insurance availability and affordability in Canada

Data is an important resource for public and private sector agencies who manage flood risk. Insurance companies use various types of data to assess, categorize, and price a property’s flood risk, including flood hazard areas and property-specific characteristics. Government agencies, such as municipalities, also use data to identify flood-prone areas and make decisions that prevent and mitigate property flood damages, such as development restrictions and infrastructure upgrades. In a time of rising economic flood damages and future climate risk uncertainties, there are increasing calls to foster flood risk governance integration “through information transfer, coordination, and cooperation” (Gilissen et al. 2016, p. 12). This study presents the Resilience Bridge Platform (“RB Platform”)—a data platform designed to facilitate the exchange of flood risk and resilience data between insurers and Canadian municipal officials. Senior staff and executives in both sectors evaluated the RB Platform and weighed in on the Platform’s ability to foster cross-sector collaboration and drive actions that could reduce the number of high-risk “uninsurable” properties. The study discusses the strengths, weaknesses, and lessons learned from the evaluation of the RB Platform as a tool to foster integrated governance for effective flood risk management.