From the Nominator

"Policymakers usually have only rough tools for predicting the impact of climate change on specific communities. Western University Engineering Professor Slobodan Simonovic quietly launched a solution: an online database that predicted flooding in any geographic area of Canada under best-, moderate-, or worst-case climate change scenarios. 

Professor Simonovic knew he had an important message but, unsure how to amplify it, he contacted Western News reporter Debora Van Brenk. A day after their conversation, Van Brenk produced a Western News article/media release that told this complex story in a compelling and accessible way--with deft writing, outstanding quotes, and arresting visuals. 

The timing was prescient: days later, British Columbia experienced the largest and most damaging floods in recent Canadian history. The story--pitched to media and shared widely online, on social media channels, and in newsletters to university staff and alumni--became one of the university’s most viewed research stories of the year. Local, national, and international media seized upon the research, as did agencies, environmentalists, engineers, and the general public. It helped shape urgent local, provincial, and national political conversations about flood mitigation and climate change. 

In a little more than two weeks, on the strength of the story and related publicity, the flood map’s metrics soared. There were more than 16 million views of the map tool’s first page (including five million the day after the story published) and 100,000 people took a deeper dive into the site.

Read the story here: https://news.westernu.ca/2021/11/flood-impact-map-a-canadian-first/"

From the Judges

Climate change made this a very relevant story, and timing it with COP26 was smart. The writing relays the scientific research well and in real-world terms, making it accessible to a broad audience.