Winner Division C and Overall Winner

Penrith City Council: Cooling the City Masterclass
Penrith City Council held its Cooling the City Masterclass in February 2020 attended by over 350 built environment professionals from across NSW, Victoria and the ACT. The sold-out event featured international, national and regional experts, who explored practical solutions to the challenge of urban heat, in the context of our changing climate. Presenters put forward practical case studies, the business case for action across all sectors, the leading planning approaches directing the state, and the latest research providing the evidence to evolve best practice.

Read the case study

Highly Commended Division C

Ku-ring-gai Council: The Simtable project 
Research from past bushfire events shows that many bushfire survival plans weren’t effective when enacted and there is a failure to include contingencies for the range of variables that occur. Ku-ring-gai Council's Climate Wise Communities addresses these deficits by allowing residents to grasp the dynamics of an extreme bushfire using a Simtable. A Simtable is a physical 3D projection of an area displaying how bushfires respond to changes in terrain, vegetation, humidity, temperature, wind direction and speed.  Introduced in September 2019, the Simtable resulted in a 300% increase in first time users to the Climate Wise Community website and more than a doubling of residents completing written bushfire plans compared to the six months pre-Simtable.