Planning for the Flood Fringe: A Comparative Analysis of Two Zone Concept Planning Policies Used by Conservation Authorities in Southern Ontario
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Settlements have historically taken root along bodies of water; however, lands adjacent to water bodies can face the risk of riverine flooding. In Southern Ontario, responsibility for representing provincial interest for plan input and review with respect to flooding hazards have been delegated to conservation authorities. While development and site alteration in the floodplain is generally not permitted or restricted, development may occur in certain areas with a reduced risk. These areas are referred to as the “flood fringe”, and the type of planning employed in such a mechanism is called the “two zone concept”. In this research, planning policies used by conservation authorities for the two zone concept are examined by answering the research questions, “how is the two zone concept of floodplain management applied by conservation authorities in Southern Ontario?” and “what are the strengths and weaknesses of the two zone concept of floodplain management as applied in Southern Ontario?” To answer the research questions, a multiple case study approach was employed. Through a literature review, components that make a high-quality natural hazard plan were examined and an evaluation framework was developed to compare planning documents that contained policies regarding the two zone concept. Planning documents released by Conservation Halton (2011), Credit Valley Conservation (2010), Kettle Creek Conservation Authority (2008), Otonabee Conservation (2012), and Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (2014) were selected for this evaluation. Overall, plans lacked mechanisms to track the planning program post-implementation, referencing to municipal land use documents as well as floodplain studies and technical criteria. All plans however clearly stated integration of its policies to provincial and municipal planning programs. From the evaluation, a set of recommendations was formulated to support improvements of existing two zone plans used by conservation authorities, as well as supporting new policy development. Recommendations were general or addressed specific concerns of planning documents reviewed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".