Since 2009, NHC has completed 15 flood management projects for the Cowichan Valley Regional District (CVRD) and its partners. These studies include the Cowichan Integrated Flood Management Plan (2009), the Risk Assessment of Floodplains and Coastal Sea Level Rise (2019), the Updated Cowichan-Koksilah Flood Mapping Project (2020) and the Shawnigan Flood Preparedness Project (2020).

As part of CVRD’s integrated flood preparedness programs, NHC has undertaken the installation of real-time hydrometric stations for early warning and flood monitoring efforts. These installations were started in 2015 with additional stations added in 2020 and 2021. Currently, NHC maintains and operates 4 flood level monitoring stations positioned at strategic locations around the City of Duncan. Some of these hydrometric stations monitor important egress routes during flood events. The dataloggers have been programmed with logic triggered by specific water levels and return periods to send alerts to key personnel in flood events.

NHC has been responsible for all aspects of station planning, installation, maintenance, and upgrades. Recent instrumentation upgrades have been completed at these monitoring stations in order to improve station integrity and ensure data reliability and accuracy. Water level monitoring instrumentation includes pressure transducers, ultrasonic sensors, and radar sensors.

Real time data transmission is provided via cellular modems which are ingested through secure protocols into NHC’s real time data management systems and software where quality control and quality assurance procedures are conducted in accordance with RISC standards. NHC publicly hosts the monitoring stations using a customized Aquarius database.