Landcare NSW’s People Led Prevention disaster resilience project reached an important milestone last week with the completion of the co-design workshops for the pilot regions.

Participants from pilot regions – North West, North Coast and North West Sydney – joined Landcare NSW in a series of workshops aimed at discovering the issues and frustrations that households and landowners face when trying to preapre for disasters.

Katie Caldwell, Landcare NSW Project Manager said: “The intention of the co-design workshops is to explore all the facets of Landcare work that contribute to disaster risk reduction. We also want to know what each community faces in the way of disasters and how we can support and engage them in becoming disaster resilient.”

The $1,900,000 project, funded by the Australian and New South Wales governments, is designed to be agile and reflect the different needs of communities in becoming prepared for natural disasters events like fire, flood, heatwaves, storms and landslips.

“Through positive engagement with households and landowners in the three pilot regions, this project aims to create a greater understanding about disaster risk and provide the tools to actively prepare and mitigate risk using nature-based solutions,” Ms Caldwell said.

Landcare NSW will be working with households and landowners in the pilot regions and collaborating with other disaster agencies by tapping into existing disaster related initiatives to deliver a seamless project that is mutually beneficial to all.

Initial results from the co-design workshops suggests that across the pilot regions the types of disaster risks most concerning for communities are fire and floods, followed closely by storms and heatwaves.

Many of the co-design participants felt that addressing the issue of being time-poor was one of the main hurdles around getting prepared for future natural disasters. Many felt that accessing information resources and the sharing of knowledge should happen at field days, as a vast majority of the targeted people already attend such events.

The next stage in the project will see the development of a disaster preparedness ‘toolkit’ for distribution throughout the pilot regions.