Disaster resilience across New South Wales is undergoing a significant shift from reactive response toward proactive risk reduction, resilience building, and long-term adaptation. This transition is being driven by the State Disaster Mitigation Plan, the development of Disaster Adaptation Plans and substantial investment through the Australian Government’s Disaster Risk Reduction Fund (DRRF) and Disaster Ready Fund (DRF).

Since 2020, 146 projects have been funded across NSW under these programs, spanning community resilience, infrastructure betterment, risk intelligence, governance and First Nations-led initiatives.  While this investment has created a strong evidence base, the ability to translate project outputs into
accessible tools for NSW councils remains limited.

To address this gap, the ISJO has undertaken a review of DRRF and DRF funded projects to identify common themes, delivery models and challenges to propose practical tools to strengthen NSW council capability.

Key Findings

The review identified a maturing disaster resilience landscape with several consistent themes:

• Strong activity but limited knowledge translation
  Project outputs are often difficult to access and not easily transferable across councils.
• Uneven grant readiness and delivery capability
  Smaller and regional councils face challenges in developing competitive applications and
  managing co-contributions requirements.
• Challenges in prioritising infrastructure investment
  Many councils require evidence-based approaches to identifying and prioritising resilience
  investments.
• Limited integration into core council systems
  Resilience initiatives are often project-based and not embedded within asset management,
  planning, or financial frameworks.
• Growing demand for data and risk intelligence
  There is increasing interest in digital tools, modelling, and real-time data, but capability remains uneven across the sector.

Proposed Tools

In response the report proposes a suite of scalable tools to support councils across NSW:

• NSW Disaster Resilience Exploration Tool
  A Power BI platform to improve visibility and accessibility of resilience projects, tools, and case studies.
• Grant Readiness Framework
  A structured approach to help councils proactively develop, prioritise, and package projects ahead of funding rounds.
• Critical Infrastructure Prioritisation Tool
  A practical framework to support risk-based infrastructure investment decisions.
• Asset Management Integration Guidance
  Resources to embed resilience into asset lifecycle planning and long-term financial strategies.
• Multi-Hazard Technology Knowledge Resource
  Guidance to support informed adoption of emerging monitoring and sensing technologies.

Please click on the image above to download the full report.