Extreme climate events such as heatwaves, droughts, fires and floods are becoming more severe, threatening the livelihoods of local communities. Many rural communities are highly resilient to these events – but increasing frequency and severity means that a community’s resilience can change rapidly. Much less data is available in the Northern Territory than other states to track how communities are coping. Early indicators of changing resilience could inform policy and enable timely interventions, by providing evidence of when communities are struggling before the strain becomes apparent in bankruptcies and suicide rates.
Northern Hub has joined with University of Canberra to expand their NSW dashboard to the NT. A series of workshops were conducted in March 2026 to identify locally relevant indicators for which data could be collected annually, and which could track changes in sentiment. These indicators are being developed into an interactive dashboard that will be updated annually. The dashboard will support communities and community stakeholders to better understand two things; current levels of resilience, and change in level of resilience over time.
This presentation will cover some of the indicators being considered for inclusion, and how the resultant dashboard could be used in the future to inform government funding, as well as to provide evidence to support the need for funding applications.