National Science Challenges
Resilience to Nature’s Challenges is one of 11 National Science Challenges, ten-year research programmes established in 2014 to tackle some of Aotearoa New Zealand’s big science questions through collaborative research. Resilience to Nature’s Challenges (RNC) was hosted by GNS Science between 2014 – 2024 and was a partnership between 13 partner research organisations.
National Science Challenges (NSCs) are an example of ‘mission-led’ research, meaning they are oriented towards public good; involve working across traditional boundaries; elevate relationships and collaboration; and seek to create wide impacts and benefits.
Collaboration was a key feature of the NSCs, and our Challenge brought together researchers from a range of disciplines, backgrounds and institutions in high-quality research teams.
Research users were involved from the outset in co-designing research projects, to ensure outputs that are useful and usable.
Our research teams developed strong relationships with hapū and iwi in case study communities and wove together Māori knowledge with hazard science, to enrich our research and deepen its relevance for Aotearoa New Zealand.
We placed a key emphasis on engaging with organisations and communities who could contribute to, and also benefit from our research, and delivering our research findings to them in innovative and accessible ways.
Phase 1
Phase 1 of the Resilience Challenge ran from 2014-2019, with ten research programmes that sought to tackle key challenges in natural hazard resilience, and which were complementary to the existing Natural Hazards Research Platform. The Phase 1 director was Prof Shane Cronin of the University of Auckland.
Phase 2
Phase 2 of the Resilience Challenge ran from 2019-2024 under director Dr Richard Smith, formerly of the Earthquake Commission (now known as the Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake).
Phase 2 involved double the investment, and an ambitious research programme. The research strategy was focused around two major themes that aligned with the government’s National Disaster Resilience Strategy.
- The Multihazard Risk theme (now called Understanding Hazard & Risk) comprised new research to advance our understanding of natural hazards (earthquakes and tsunami, volcanoes, coastal hazards, high impact weather, and wildfires).
- The Resilience in Practice theme (now called Accelerating Resilience) comprised mātauranga Māori, social science, and economic and engineering research to develop policies, tools and methods to ensure new resilience knowledge becomes part of daily decision making in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Read a summary of our key achievements:
Culture, collaboration and capability
We’ve been able to make a real difference to the way that natural hazards research is carried out.
Our research has been underpinned by a ‘culture of collaboration’, involving hundreds of researchers from over 20 research organisations, spanning numerous disciplines.
We’ve provided support for over 100 PhD and Master’s students, growing the next generation of natural hazards experts. We’ve also provided leadership opportunities for our early-career researchers.
We’ve developed a strong and supportive cohort of Māori researchers across RNC and contributed to the Rauika Māngai, the collective of Māori researchers and leaders from across the NSCs.
We have been on a journey over our ten years, embedding Te Tiriti in our governance, relationships, principles and priorities.
We have developed new, innovative ways of delivering research findings to the communities that need them, such as character-driven short videos.
The future
The success of this multi-disciplinary, collaborative way of delivering natural hazards resilience research has been recognised by government. In the 2024 Budget, there was $70 million over seven years set aside for a new Natural Hazards and Resilience Platform, which will share many of the features of RNC, including its mission, and also be hosted at GNS Science. This is an exciting development that will enable the resilience research community and collaborators to build on the strong foundations established by RNC.