Selected work
Bega Valley Resilient Road Network
Bega Valley Shire Council (NSW)
Using the Enabling Resilience Investment framework, Bega Valley Shire Council strengthened the resilience of its road network against multiple climate hazards, from freight corridors to tourism connectivity.
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Overview
Bega Valley Shire Council engaged VAP to strengthen the resilience of its road network against multiple climate hazards, from freight corridors to tourism connectivity. Using the Enabling Resilience Investment (ERI) framework between early 2023 and late 2024, the project built a resilience investment case to prioritise climate-adaptive infrastructure investment and secure federal funding.
Our approach
Using the Enabling Resilience Investment (ERI) framework, Bega Valley Shire Council (BVSC) undertook a project to strengthen the resilience of its road network against multiple climate hazards. ERI is an engagement, planning and analysis process that incorporates value creation and systemic risk mitigation into the design and delivery of infrastructure investment, delivered across three phases - creating adaptive spaces, options and pathways; building resilience investment cases; and preparing for funding and financing.
The challenge
Bega Valley Shire is an expansive Local Government Area of over 6,000 square kilometres and a population of more than 36,000 across a mix of community typologies. In the last five years the region has been directly hit by catastrophic natural disasters, including bushfire in Cobargo, riverine flooding in Bega, storm surge in Tathra and landslides at Brown Mountain, with some areas affected by multiple hazards in the same year. An extensive network of road assets, including aging, heritage-listed single-lane timber bridges, is expensive to operate and maintain, and some coastal communities can become isolated during hazard events due to having only one road in and out.
Co-design process
The project engaged more than 30 council staff and external stakeholders through five workshops to understand the rationale of the ERI process, frame a vision for a resilient Bega Valley Shire, identify key service needs, generate resilience-building interventions and stress test them under climate change and growth scenarios. A key output was "Enabling Resilience Investment: A practical manual for Bega Valley Shire Council", including a Rivermap - a step-by-step adoption guide and visual journey supporting ongoing ERI implementation and organisational capability.
Resilient investment cases
A multi-criteria assessment of four candidate focal areas resulted in two prioritised Resilience Investment Cases. Resilient Transport Corridors takes a regional focus across the Shire, ensuring continued road access for goods, services and people during hazard events. String of Sapphires focuses on connectivity between the coastal villages of Bermagui and Tathra, investing in a resilient alternate route to the Princes Highway for both local and tourist connectivity.
The RICE tool
A key output of the project was the Resilience Investment Case Explorer (RICE), a web-based interactive decision support tool that quantifies the benefits, costs, hazard susceptibility and reconstruction value of interventions. RICE gives Council a common platform for decision-making, supporting detailed assessment of investment logic and bundles of interventions, as well as one-page summaries of evidence for funding applications and advocacy.
The outcome
The project enabled Bega Valley Shire Council to secure federal funding for disaster risk reduction initiatives and provided toolkits, user guides and data resources to embed the methodology into future infrastructure planning. The work was named a 2025 ESOMAR Awards finalist for "From Risk to Value: A Data-Led Framework for Enabling Resilience Investment in Bega Valley". The approach has since been identified for further application across other council infrastructure projects, other levels of government, Disaster Adaptation Plans and broader strategic planning for urban and regional areas.