In the first half of 2020 the Urban programme established the Urban Resilience Innovation & Collaboration Hub, a round of contestable funding with the purpose of supporting research and research-related activities that promote urban resilience in New Zealand. The fund provides up to NZD $10,000 for projects that add value to the existing work within the Urban programme of the Resilience to Nature’s Challenges National Science Challenge. Projects will run up for up to two years.
Applications closed in July with the final decisions made in August by the Urban Steering Committee and co-opted panel members Josh Te Kani (RNC Vision Mātauranga Knowledge Broker) and Jo Horrocks (EQC). We are pleased to announce that twelve projects have been selected. These projects represent a diverse range of topics and involve researchers representing universities, institutes, iwi, NGOs, schools, and community groups. We are very pleased to welcome them into the RNC Urban programme waka.
A list of the twelve funded projects, with primary investigators (PI), project titles, and associated organisations is below.
| PI Name(s) | Project title | Organisation(s) |
| Siautu Alefaio | Talanoa Podcast: Educating and strengthening resilient communities in Manurewa | Massey University and Roscommon School |
| Carel Bezuidenhout | Impacts of an urban shock to local food supply chains | Massey University |
| Denise Blake | Sex work for Māori: Covid-19 and beyond | Massey University, The University of Auckland and New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective |
| Edward Challies; Frances Charters | Assessing co-benefits of blue-green infrastructure for urban social-ecological resilience | University of Canterbury |
| Kaye-Maree Dunn | I-Hono ki te Hapori | Making Everything Achievable Limited |
| Jenny Lee-Morgan | Urban Marae Responses to Covid-19: Creative Pikitia Series | Nga Wai a Te Tui – Unitec Institute of Technology NZ |
| Jesse Grayman | The Role of Faith-Based Institutions in Auckland’s Disaster Resilience During and After Covid-19 | University of Auckland, Faculty of Arts |
| Tom Logan | Multi-criteria spatial optimisation for guiding long-term land use planning for resilience and sustainability | University of Canterbury |
| Steve Ronoh; Loic Le De | Good and Ready New Zealand | New Zealand Red Cross and Auckland University of Technology |
| Finn Scheele | Development of a population exposure model for New Zealand | GNS Science |
| Marion Tan | CRISiS Lab Education and Outreach Project | Joint Centre for Disaster Research, Massey University Civil and Environmental Engineering, and The University of Auckland |
| Sophia Tsang | Living with hazards and risks in Auckland: Which locations in Tāmaki Makaurau do we value the most? | The University of Auckland |
