Dr. Ryan Reynolds,
Ph.D., MGIS

Principal Researcher / Developer

Dr. Reynolds’ research aims to help Canadian communities and households better understand, prepare for, and respond to local hazard risks. This work combines geospatial modelling, risk communication, and application development to assess and communicate hazard risk information at the community, neighbourhood, and household scales.

Ryan holds a master’s degree in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) focused on public participation GIS and a Ph.D. focused on tsunami risk and evacuation modelling from the Department of Geography at the University of Calgary. His post-doctoral research was conducted as a Research and Teaching Fellow at the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia. Most recently he worked as a Coastal Risk Analyst with the Geological Survey of Canada in Natural Resources Canada exploring the impacts of coastal storm surge and sea-level rise in the Arctic.

Education
Ph.D., Geography
University of Calgary, 2017

MGIS, Geography
University of Calgary, 2010

BA, Archaeology
University of Calgary, 1999

Post-Doctoral Research
Post-Doctoral Research & Teaching Fellow
School of Community and Regional Planning,
University of British Columbia
2017–2022

Affiliations
American Association of Geographers (AAG)

Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER)

Marine Environmental Observation, Prediction & Response Network (MEOPAR)

Coast and Ocean Risk Communication Community of Practice (CoRC CoP)

Certifications
Principals of OCAP, First Nations Information Governance Centre (FNIGC), October 2022

The Path–Canadian School for Public Service, NVision Insight Group, August 2022

Recent Media

Canadian Hazards Emergency Response & Preparedness Initiative | National

Lead Researcher / Developer

CHERP is a research outreach and engagement project with the goal of making it quicker and easier for community residents to learn about, prepare for, and respond to local environmental and climate-related hazard threats. Working with our partner communities, we’re developing a mobile app that helps simplify household emergency planning, adapting to the unique needs of individual communities and households.

Extreme Heat Vulnerability Mapping | North Shore Emergency Management | North Vancouver, BC

Mapping Lead

Working with partners Introba, Sage on Earth, and AdaptCollaboration, Ryan is exploring the disproportionate impacts that extreme heat has on the communities of Vancouver’s North Shore region. Combining traditional indicators of extreme heat risk with those arising from community and indigenous engagement, Ryan is developing extreme heat and social vulnerability maps to help guide discussions toward making the North Shore more resilient to extreme heat events. This work is underway, with an expected public release in Spring 2024.

Coastal Flood Risk Assessment | Natural Resources Canada | Tuktoyaktuk, NWT

Coastal Risk Analyst

Working with the Geological Survey of Canada, Ryan is completing a coastal flood risk assessment for the hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories. This work includes risk mapping based on storm surge modelling completed by Canada’s National Research Council for six annual return periods and four sea-level rise scenarios. Ryan’s maps help identify those roadways, structures, and important cultural and heritage sites threatened in these 24 scenarios. Through engagement with elders and community leaders from Tuktoyaktuk, the goal is to ensure that this work meets both addresses local concerns and incorporates their voices into the final risk assessment report expected in late 2023.

DRR Pathways | UBC | Vancouver, BC

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow

The Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Pathways project, headed by Natural Resources Canada and funded by the Canadian Safety and Security Program, is a partnership that brings together researchers and practitioners working in the hazards risk reduction space from government agencies, communities, non-governmental organizations, and academia to establish shared pathways to disaster resilience in British Columbia, with an initial focus on the Lower Mainland. Our team at UBC contributed three components to the project:

Social Vulnerability Assessment, City of Vancouver:
Working with Natural Resources Canada, the City of Vancouver, and Sage on Earth, we developed a set of fourteen socio-economic vulnerability indicators and a GIS model to assess three social vulnerability themes identified by the City of Vancouver as part of the City’s seismic retrofit project. This work allowed us to identify those neighbourhoods within the city most susceptible to the effects of a major earthquake or similar disaster due to their physical, social, or economic characteristics. Identifying those areas before a real emergency allows policymakers and emergency managers to develop appropriate plans and pre-position equipment, materials, and human resources for areas of greatest need. The project used an iterative consultation process to reduce an initial set of 84 potential social, economic, and spatial indicators to a final set of fourteen, grouped into three themes aligned with stated policy objectives: shelter needs, social service dependence, and reduced financial capacity.

Risk Dynamics, Metro Vancouver:
Disaster risk is dynamic and future planning needs to account for factors such as population growth, land use changes, new construction methods, and building code improvements. These factors can change the overall risk within a neighbourhood and how “hot spot” locations will likely shift over time. We teamed with Natural Resources Canada and Metro Vancouver to explore how the impacts of potential earthquake events in the region are likely to change as the community grows and changes over decadal timeframes using the region’s future growth projections for 2035 and 2050.

Neighbourhood Resilience, Recovery, and Recoverability Indicators, City of Vancouver:
Disaster recovery focuses on restoring a community’s built, social, economic, and natural environments following a disaster. Our team worked to identify in advance those factors that can affect a neighbourhood’s capacity for recovery. More resilient neighbourhoods will generally be better placed for a quick and successful recovery, while more vulnerable neighbourhoods often experience slower, less successful recoveries. We identified eleven disaster recovery indicators at the census tract level, focusing on access to critical goods and services, business stability and sustainability, and socio-economic factors impacting resident recovery capacity within the City of Vancouver.

Resilient Coasts Canada (Resilient-C) Platform | UBC | National

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow

Funded through the Marine Environmental Observation, Prediction and Response Network (MEOPAR) and led by Dr. Stephanie Chang, the Resilient-C platform explores coastal hazard risk across Canada with the goal of promoting resilient and sustainable development and planning strategies in coastal communities. Ryan helped update the 25 hazard vulnerability indicators and the extensive GIS model used to help communities identify peers facing similar hazard threats across the country. During his time with the project, the platform expanded from 50 communities along the Salish Sea in B.C. to over 180 communities across seven provinces, with over 4,450 individual indicator values processed in real-time.

Tsunami Warning Post-Evacuation Assessment | UBC | Port Alberni, BC

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow

On January 23rd, 2018, many residents of Port Alberni and neighbouring communities in the Alberni Valley were woken by the sirens of the community’s Tsunami Warning System. Following this event, Ryan and collaborator Alexa Tanner conducted paired doorstep and online surveys, receiving over 350 responses from residents of the Valley, helping them understand residents’ reactions and risk perceptions following the 3 am tsunami warning and evacuation. Funded through a Quick Response grant from the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR), the study produced a titled “What’s that Sound?” that includes lessons identified during the event and a set of risk communication best practices arising directly from the in-person and online surveys completed by residents, coupled with interviews with eleven current and former community officials.