The Ontario Broker - June 2019 - 16

GETTING
HOMEOWNERS TO ACT
BEFORE THE FLOOD
BY JEFF TOTH, MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST, IBAO

"W

e work directly
with homeowners,
businesses and
governments to
find out where their pain points are and
then work with them to develop a number
of tools to guide their decisions," said
Cheryl Evans, Director of the Home Flood
Protection Program, a division of Intact's
Centre on Climate Adaptation, a research
centre that helps Canadians adapt to
climate change and extreme weather.
Mandy Dennison, Director of Corporate
Social Responsibility at Intact explains,
"We've been involved with the University
of Waterloo since 2010. The Intact Centre
on Climate Adaptation came out of a couple
of years of research that asked how Canada
needs to tackle some of the core challenges
we're facing due to climate change. We
funded 20 wide-ranging projects across the
country and we narrowed in on initiatives
that focused on the homeowner. The results
of that research led us to develop the Intact
Centre-an incubator for practical, actionoriented research."
The Home Flood Protection Program
is a public education initiative focused
on helping residents reduce their flood
risk and potential damage in the event
of a flood. The research began with 500
flood risk assessments, the majority of
which were done in Ontario. A trained
assessor would identify flood risks and
opportunities to reduce risk. From those
assessments, researchers would gauge what
were reasonable requests and what actions
homeowners were willing to undertake, and

JUNE 2019

then generate a report that summarized top
actions for homeowners.
"We followed up with them three and six
months later to find out what they'd actually
done to reduce their risk and where they
got stuck. That allowed us to gather more
data and find out what was really critically
and commonly important to focus future
outreach," said Cheryl. "One of the things
that really stood out from our research
was that most people aren't undertaking
maintenance and don't understand how
important it is."
Key information and lessons learned
were pulled together into a doublesided infographic handout for public
consumption. "We took the areas we found
were the most common as flood risks, but
also most cost effective and applicable, and
we sorted them in a way that would make
sense to people," said Cheryl.
The front page of the handout, Three Steps
of Cost-Effective Basement Flood Protection,
is organized into three tiers of actions
for homeowners: maintenance activities
homeowners can do for free, upgrades they
can make themselves for less than $250 at
the hardware store, and more complicated
upgrades over $250 that typically involve
hiring a contractor.
"The more complex upgrades are the features
that will often earn insurance discounts
and help people qualify for subsidies from
municipal government, like installing a
backwater valve," said Cheryl.

16

Both the handout and research
report are available on their website,
HomeFloodProtect.ca, which also features
simple videos that demonstrate how to
clean out a backwater valve and maintain
a sump pump, and links to available
municipal rebates.
"We're seeing the impacts of flood on our
customers day-to-day and there's a growing
need for these kinds of programs and
initiatives," said Mandy. "The research has
led to other ventures, like a Home Inspector
Training Program through Seneca and
Fleming Colleges, where home inspectors
and municipality leaders, like storm water
managers, can become certified home flood
inspectors."
The latest phase of the project was
producing broker workshops based on
the findings, designed to provide brokers
the tools they need to help residents
understand the issues and drive action.
The Intact Centre worked with IBAC to
determine the best way to deliver the
content to brokers, ultimately packaging the
information in five simple online modules
that brokers can take during their lunch
breaks.
"We know from our research that one of the
most important influences to get people
to act is direct conversations with trusted
people," says Cheryl. "That's why we want
to focus on brokers, because they have the
power to directly engage residents and get
them to help themselves."

WWW.IBAO.ORG
http://www.HomeFloodProtect.ca http://WWW.IBAO.ORG
The Ontario Broker - June 2019

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