Applied Climate Science for Infrastructure Professionals
An Infrastructure Resilience Professional (IRP) Online Course
The Applied Science for Infrastructure Professionals online course will focus on building competency and skills to access climate data and climate services, and to apply climate information in the context of engineering, infrastructure and design to support climate change adaptation and resilience.
The Climate Risk Institute is excited to announce that our suite of courses that make up the Infrastructure Resilience Professional (IRP) Credential is moving to a new platform in collaboration with Royal Roads University. Our courses will now be hosted on the Moodle Platform where you will be able to find all course material and engage in discussions and knowledge sharing with other participants and instructors. The courses are a blend of synchronous sessions (where you will join live Zoom meetings once per week) and asynchronous content where instructors have recorded lecture content and readings that you can complete on your own schedule.
Upcoming Course Offerings
Visit Royal Roads University for upcoming start dates. Registration and payment are through our partner website at Royal Roads University. You’ll need to create a Royal Roads account if you don’t have one
Registration and upcoming dates!
Course Fee
$795 plus applicable taxes
Fees cover online course instruction and presentation materials in pdf format. Participants will be provided access to course materials one week prior to the beginning of the Course. This training is intended for individual instruction, not for groups under a single registration.
The course is designed to fulfill one of the knowledge requirements of the Infrastructure Resilience Professional (IRP) Credentialing Program, but it can also be taken as a stand-alone course for professional development credits
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Course Description
This course will focus on building competency and skills to access climate data and climate services, and to apply climate information in the context of engineering, infrastructure and design to support climate change adaptation and resilience. It will provide clear, concise and up-to-date information for engineers and other practitioners interested in enhancing the climate resilience of existing and new infrastructure systems. The course does not seek to train Climate Scientists, but rather, to raise awareness about climate change and illustrates practical considerations for integrating climate change into real-world projects. The course is intended to prepare practitioners to form collaborative interdisciplinary teams to analyze principal challenges and opportunities for climate change integration in the conventional project cycle.
In this course, the fundamental principles that underpin climate change science will be reviewed, including the application of climate scenarios, and the role of global and regional climate models in predicting the behaviour of the climate system in response to different forcing scenarios. Participants will develop an understanding of how we can translate climate model outputs in support of multi-scale impacts assessment of various engineering systems including infrastructure systems. The course will discuss the challenges of applying climate data in design and provide strategies to overcome common barriers to the use of climate data in adaptation.
By providing participants with insight into respective languages, approaches and needs, the course will help bring together the worlds of infrastructure design and climate science in support of climate resilience.
The course is structured to encourage engagement and allow for course participants to directly apply course content to their professional experience. Each module will include an exercise and facilitated discussion where participants will learn from instructors and one another.
All IRP courses are of interest to engineers and other professionals who are involved in the planning, procurement, design, operation, maintenance, management and regulation of infrastructure and who need to consider the changing climate in carrying out these activities.
Meet the Instructors!
Elvis Asong, Ph.D.
Dr. Asong has over 15 years of experience in providing targeted climate service analyses for critical planning efforts, such as for infrastructure design, energy, water management, oil and gas, forestry, and agricultural and recreational industry strategic planning. He is at his best setting the practical climate science vision and strategy while helping agencies ranging in scale from rural community organizations, engineering, and environmental firms, up to provincial and territorial governments to navigate climate impacts, vulnerability and risk assessment problems in practice through science-led integration. Read more…
Norman Shippee, Ph.D.
Dr. Shippee is the Canadian Technical Lead for Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation and Senior Climate Scientist at Stantec Consulting, based in Ottawa, Ontario. He is a Climatologist with extensive research and climate risk assessment experience. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Victoria and was a postdoctoral research associate at the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium. Read more…
Paul Cobb, B. Eng
Paul is a Manager of Training Services with the Climate Risk Institute. An engineer by training, he has dedicated his career to finding and implementing climate change solutions. Paul’s work spans twenty years in the fields of climate change mitigation and adaptation – working with everyone from rural communities to provincial and territorial governments – helping identify and implement climate solutions. Read more…