When it comes to climate adaptation, the Northern Rivers faces a complex challenge: how do you develop plans that work for dozens of different communities, each with their own priorities and concerns?

What Matters Most is a toolkit for bringing community values into disaster adaptation decisions. Funded by the NSW Reconstruction Authority, it translates what matters to people into coherent data and insights that are informing the Northern Rivers' first Disaster Adaptation Plan—a comprehensive action plan to reduce risk and prepare for natural hazards like floods and fires, climate change and future challenges.

The importance of values in planning

Disaster adaptation demands decisions about what we protect, what we adapt, and what may be lost—decisions that must reflect what communities truly value. Yet community consultation is often too narrow or too unstructured to meaningfully inform these decisions. Where do community values conflict with identified vulnerabilities? What gets prioritised when resources are limited?

This is where What Matters Most started. We wanted to see values inform disaster adaptation planning. Working in a region still navigating the impact of the 2022 floods, our challenge was to create a process that people could trust, and to turn their values and local knowledge into actionable data, which could inform new planning.

A new approach

Working with Parallel Lines founder and designer Chris Gaul and the NSW Reconstruction Authority, we created something entirely new. After extensive research, we couldn't find an existing methodology that measures or maps the values communities hold about where they live. So we designed our own.

Our methodology gets to the heart of what communities value. It's not just about identifying risks, but about understanding what people want to protect and why. The approach is both systematic and flexible, giving communities tools to articulate their values while providing decision-makers with insights to create adaptation plans that align with local priorities.

Community values workshops across the Northern Rivers

During August—October 2025 we hosted 9 workshops across the Northern Rivers, from Murwillumbah to Grafton. In a well-designed inclusive workshop, locals shared what they value most about where they live—what they want to protect, what concerns them, and what priorities should guide our region’s future.

During the design phase, we were aware that many residents felt exhausted by engagement processes that seemed invasive and extractive. (An experience that emerges in a disaster recovery phase.) The workshops were designed to avoid this by creating value for participants—building deeper connections within their communities, strengthening understanding of what matters to others, and increasing both their understanding of, and opportunity to participate in, formal decision-making processes.

Insights and visualisations

In the report below is a summary of our findings. Insights and data from these workshops are informing the Regional Risk Information and Understanding of Place for Stage 2 of the Northern Rivers Disaster Adaptation Plan, directly influencing the direction of large-scale public investment in disaster adaptation.

Learn more about the Northern Rivers Disaster Adaptation Plan.

Data visualisations

The following data visualisations were developed from the data collected in the workshops. They focus on what people said ‘Matters Most'.

Each of these graphics provides a particular insight showing what participants said ‘Matters Most’, how they responded to specific questions and how different groups responded differently. In this information we can see a picture emerge of the values we share and the diversity of values across the Northern Rivers. 

Read the report to explore more visualisations developed from the data.

Beyond our region

Tested in practice in the Northern Rivers, What Matters Most is ready to be applied in other regions facing similar challenges. If you are interested to learn more about the methodology and learnings from this pilot project, please contact us by email.