Six-year research program delivers disaster resilience school curriculum

Published: 29 October 2026

Floods, fires and storms shape life in the Northern Rivers, and education helps communities prepare and recover. A new curriculum resource developed by Southern Cross University and Resilient Lismore will help educators build disaster literacy among young people.

Launched at the recent Disaster Ready Together Summit, attended by community service organisations, emergency management agencies, researchers and residents in Lismore, the curriculum is the latest output of a research program that began before the 2022 floods and now extends to a significant national study.

A curriculum written by the researchers behind it

The Disaster Resilience Curriculum Package introduces the principles of disaster resilience to students and helps them develop the skills to adapt.

The package of lesson outlines, worksheet briefs, and custom-made videos was written by Southern Cross University researchers Dr Sarah Crinall, Dr Liberty de Rivera and Professor Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, developed with Resilient Lismore and other community and industry partners, and mapped to the Australian Curriculum.

"This curriculum work is a key lever to grow resilience in Northern Rivers schools and beyond," said Ben Roche, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research & Education Impact), Southern Cross University.

"It is a response to the floods in 2022, but also reflects a growing awareness that more needs to be done to support preparedness and the development of community resilience."

Informed by six years of ongoing research, it forms part of a much larger project to co-design Australia's first Disaster Ready Education Framework, examining and preparing schools for climate-induced disasters.

When the Southern Cross team wrote and submitted the ARC Linkage project 'Disaster Ready Schools', their personal experiences of Tropical Cyclone Alfred underlined the importance of this work.

"The team experienced the severe impacts of Cyclone Alfred, including displacement, no power, no wi-fi and school cancellations - living the direct impacts of a climate-induced disaster," said project lead chief investigator and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Education, Professor Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles.

“This project is critically important to all Australian schools and will deliver the nation's first Disaster Ready Education Framework.”

A program that started with children's own voices

The Southern Cross University Faculty of Education's work on climate and disaster began in 2020 with Climate Change + Me, a child-led climate education app built with young people around Australia.

After the 2022 Lismore floods closed nearly 1,000 Northern Rivers schools, the team turned the same approach on the disaster in front of them.

Floods + Me, backed by a Southern Cross University Vice-Chancellor's Flood Recovery Scheme award, worked with young people to document their flood experiences and translate them into an education framework and a community exhibition. It extended to Maribyrnong in Victoria in 2024, after flooding on the Maribyrnong River.

In 2026 it became Disaster Ready Schools, a three-year Australian Research Council Linkage project, partnered with UNICEF Australia, Queensland's Department of Education, the Australian Association for Environmental Education (AAEE), and Maribyrnong City Council.