Management of Climate Risk for Infrastructure Professionals

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An Infrastructure Resilience Professional (IRP) Online Course

The Management of Climate Risk for Infrastructure Professionals online course addresses the societal importance of risk-based decision-making, introduces a diverse set of risk management frameworks, and reviews the main principles and definitions underlying risk and, more specifically, public risk management.

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 Registration

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 online course addresses the societal importance of risk-based decision making, introduces a diverse set of risk management frameworks, and reviews main principles and definitions underlying risk and, more specifically, public risk management. The course reviews core analytical tools used in risk assessment; explores trade-offs in choices among risk assessment methods; and addresses common human errors in reasoning about probability and risk. Using a climate change and flooding case study example, the course works through all key stages of risk assessment and management. Addressing a key need, the course includes a full module on risk communication principles and practice.  

Participants will apply knowledge and skills acquired through an exploration of a detailed case study presented by Christine Zimmer, Chief, Watershed Risk Assessment at Credit Valley Conservation. The case study will provide an opportunity to explore an analytical risk tool – the Risk and Return on Investment Tool (RROIT) – as well as learn about real-world challenges and solutions in risk communication.  

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!

Greg Paoli, MASc, BASc.

Greg holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering (1991) and a Master’s Degree in Systems Design Engineering (1993). Early in  his career at Waterloo’s Institute for Risk Research as Research Manager, his work covered climate change impacts on permafrost, the use of software to shutdown nuclear power reactors, and the application of Bayesian networks for probabilistic weight-of-evidence evaluations of carcinogenicity. Read more…

Anne Wiles, Ph.D.

Anne came to RSI through her interests in public and institutional attitudes to risk and complex technologies. After time as writer and editor with federal government, and with a couple of degrees in English literature, she became interested in the different ways in which people interpret events, and scientific explanations for them, and investigated these issues through the discipline of human geography. Read more…

Christine Zimmer, MSEng, P.Eng.

Christine Zimmer, M.Sc.(Eng.), P.Eng., is the manager of water protection and restoration for CVC. She is responsible for developing tools, guidance documents, and providing assistance to stakeholders implementing LID practices in both new and existing urban areas. Zimmer and her team are also responsible for in-stream real-time water quality monitoring and monitoring of innovative stormwater technologies.. 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…