How embracing experimentation and collaboration is helping one of Australia’s fastest-growing municipalities tackle the climate challenge.
Local governments stand at the forefront of the climate change challenge. Charged with managing vital infrastructure, delivering essential services, and fostering community wellbeing, councils are increasingly grappling with the impacts of a changing climate – from extreme weather events and urban heat islands, to biodiversity loss and resource scarcity.
Finding effective, locally relevant solutions requires moving beyond traditional planning cycles. The City of Casey, located in Melbourne’s rapidly expanding south-east corridor, is embracing one such approach: a Living Lab.
Building on its success with previous Living Labs focused on digital equity, the circular economy, and future mobility, Casey has now launched its Climate Action Living Lab. This initiative aims to accelerate the development and adoption of practical climate solutions by providing a framework for real-world experimentation, collaboration, and community co-design.
What is a Living Lab?
At its core, a Living Lab is a user-centred, open innovation ecosystem, often operating in a specific geographic area or community context. It integrates research and innovation processes within a public-private-people partnership. The model encourages trialling new ideas, technologies and services on a small scale, learning from both successes and failures, and allowing for rapid iteration and refinement before potentially scaling up.
There are three key components to a Living Lab:
- Problem: Living Labs address multifaceted issues that have significant implications for the community, economy, and environment.
- People: This model brings together diverse stakeholders – government, academia, industry, entrepreneurs, and the community – to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing. End-users (residents, businesses, community groups) are not just subjects of study but active participants in the innovation process. They help define problems, co-design solutions, provide feedback, and evaluate outcomes.
- Place: Experiments and trials take place in real-life contexts (neighbourhoods, public spaces, businesses) rather than controlled laboratory environments. This ensures solutions are tested under genuine conditions, facing real-world complexities.
Solving complex problems
Climate change is the quintessential ‘wicked problem’ – complex, interconnected, and often lacking straightforward solutions. Traditional top-down approaches can struggle to address the localised nuances and diverse impacts of climate change effectively. The Living Lab model offers several advantages in this context:
- Adaptability and local relevance: By testing solutions in situ with community involvement, Living Labs ensure interventions are tailored to specific local needs, conditions, and social dynamics.
- Reduced risk: Small-scale trials allow councils to test innovative but potentially unproven ideas without committing significant resources upfront. Failures become learning opportunities rather than costly mistakes.
- Fostering innovation: The collaborative environment brings together diverse perspectives and expertise, sparking creative solutions that might not emerge from siloed approaches.
- Building buy-in and capacity: Engaging the community and stakeholders directly in the process builds understanding, acceptance, and ownership of climate actions. It also helps build local capacity to adapt and respond.
- Generating real-world evidence: Data and insights gathered from Living Lab trials provide robust evidence to inform future policy decisions, strategic planning, and larger-scale investments.
Casey’s climate imperative
As one of Australia’s largest and fastest-growing municipalities, the City of Casey faces significant challenges amplified by climate change. Rapid urban development contributes to urban heat island effects, places pressure on existing infrastructure and natural ecosystems, and generates substantial waste and emissions. Council recognises its critical role in mitigating these impacts and building a resilient community.
Casey’s commitment is formalised in its Climate Action Plan which outlines ambitious goals for reducing council and community greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing biodiversity, transitioning towards a circular economy, and increasing climate resilience. The Climate Action Living Lab is a key mechanism designed to translate these strategic goals into tangible, on-the-ground actions. It provides a dynamic platform to explore, test, and validate innovative solutions that can contribute to achieving the Plan’s objectives.
Focus areas and partner organisations
The Climate Action Living Lab is focused on three areas, aligned with community priorities:
- Sustainability and biodiversity: How might we protect and increase native vegetation and animal habitat?
- Safety and climate resilience: How might we ensure the safety and wellbeing of the community during and after extreme weather events?
- Renewable energy: How might we increase the uptake of renewable energy for the community?
To address these challenges, organisations operating in the climate-ready space were invited to apply for a Climate Action Living Lab grant in August 2024. Following an extensive application process, six organisations have been chosen to partner with Council over the next 12 months to trial innovative solutions for climate action.
1. Empowering Youth for Climate Action
In partnership with the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub, climate scientists will collaborate with local secondary school students and teachers to co-design engaging climate and energy education materials. The initiative aims to build climate literacy and empower young people to lead future environmental action.
2. Hands-On Conservation of Endangered Plants
Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne will work closely with two local primary schools to involve students in cultivating the endangered Swamp Everlasting (Xerochrysum palustre). This hands-on conservation experience fosters environmental awareness and a sense of stewardship among young learners.
3. Innovative Weed Management for Healthier Wetlands
With support from Federation University, this project trials UV-C light technology in Casey’s wetlands as an alternative to chemical weed control. The goal is to protect sensitive ecosystems while exploring more sustainable land management practices.
4. Clean Mobile Power for Greener Events
Equoia will deploy mobile battery-powered “Power Droids” at Council-run events across Casey. By replacing noisy, polluting diesel and petrol generators, the project offers a cleaner, more sustainable way to power community activities.
5. Protecting Local Wildlife through Citizen Science
The Western Port Catchment Landcare Network will monitor Southern Brown Bandicoot populations using wildlife cameras placed throughout Casey. Local schools and residents will contribute to this vital conservation effort through community-based data collection.
6. Listening to Koalas for Better Conservation
The Mornington Peninsula and Western Port Biosphere Reserve Foundation will use acoustic monitoring to detect koala vocalisations across the Western Port Koala Corridor. The data gathered will support more targeted and effective conservation strategies for Casey’s koala population. These six projects showcase the breadth of the Climate Action Living Lab, leveraging partnerships and community involvement to test practical solutions across Council’s key climate action priorities. The outcomes over the next year will provide valuable data and insights for future initiatives and potential scale-up opportunities.
Casey’s Previous Living Labs
The Climate Action Living Lab is not Casey’s first foray into this innovative model. Council has previously established three other Living Labs, each generating valuable learning opportunities and positive impacts:
- Digital Doveton (Digital Equity Living Lab): Focused on bridging the digital divide in the Doveton community. This Lab trialled initiatives like free public Wi-Fi, community tech support hubs, digital literacy training programs, and affordable device access schemes. It generated crucial data on the specific barriers residents faced and tested practical solutions, leading to improved digital inclusion and informing Council’s broader digital equity strategies.
- Circular Casey (Circular Economy Living Lab): Aimed at accelerating the transition to a circular economy within the municipality by reducing food waste, reducing construction and demolition waste, and improving building maintenance. Trials included a household food waste reduction campaign, an app for retailers to sell surplus food, coffee ground collection for community gardens, and investigating new models for resource recovery. Circular Casey provided tangible evidence of community interest in waste reduction and reuse, and informed the review of Council’s asset disposal policy.
- Future Mobility Living Lab: Explored safe and sustainable transport solutions for the growing municipality. This involved a trial to enhance pedestrian safety in school zones, and exploring eco-friendly alternatives to materials used in street paving. The Lab provided valuable insights into safe and sustainable ways for residents to move around the City, informing Council’s road safety and infrastructure initiatives.
The success of these earlier Labs demonstrated the power of the model to tackle diverse, complex local government challenges. They proved the value of real-world testing, stakeholder collaboration, and iterative learning in developing effective, community-centred solutions.
Important lessons
The City of Casey’s commitment to the Living Lab model offers several takeaways:
- Embrace experimentation: Be open to trialling new ideas on a small, manageable scale. Living Labs provide a relatively low-risk environment to test innovations before wider rollout.
- Harness collaboration: Complex problems require diverse perspectives. Actively seek partnerships with industry, academia, research institutions, community groups, and residents.
- Centre the community: Involve end-users and the broader community throughout the process – from identifying priorities to participating in trials and evaluating solutions. This ensures relevance and builds buy-in.
- Learn iteratively: View trials, even unsuccessful ones, as learning opportunities. Collect data, evaluate honestly, and adapt your approach based on real-world evidence.
- Connect to strategy: Ensure Living Lab activities align with broader Council goals and strategic plans to maximise impact and justify investment.
As climate change impacts intensify, local governments need dynamic, adaptive, and collaborative approaches. The City of Casey’s Climate Action Living Lab exemplifies how the Living Lab model can be a powerful tool to cultivate local solutions, engage the community, and accelerate progress towards a more sustainable and resilient future. Its journey, including the evolving project trials, offers a valuable case study for councils nationwide seeking to turn climate ambition into tangible action.
Read more about the Climate Action Living Lab, and download the Living Lab Playbook to discover how this approach can help your organisation create impactful solutions, at casey.vic.gov.au/living-lab
