Disaster Ready Fund 2025/2026

The Australian Government has not specified a date from which successful projects can commence. Applicants are encouraged to consider the assessment and contracting timelines when planning their project state date. For Round 3, a start date of 1 April 2026 or later is recommended.

The Disaster Ready Fund (DRF) is the Australian Government’s flagship initiative for disaster resilience and risk reduction.

The DRF is administrated by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in partnership with states and territory government agencies responsible for emergency management.

Visit the NEMA Website

The Australian Government is providing up to one billion dollars through the DRF. The funding runs over five years from 1 July 2023.

The funding supports projects which address the physical and social impacts of disasters on our communities. This includes disasters that can be caused by climate change and other natural hazards.

The DRF Investment Principles guide DRF investment decisions and are reflected in the DRF assessment criteria, to encourage projects that are:

• Risk Informed
• Aligned with plans
• Priority targeted
• Diverse and equitable

A full description of the Investment Principles can be found in Section 2 of the DRF Round 3 Guidelines.

The DRF supports projects that:

• increase the understanding of natural hazard impacts, as a first step towards reducing disaster impacts in the future;
• increase the resilience, adaptive capacity and/or preparedness of governments, community service organisations and affected communities to minimise the potential impact of natural hazards and avert disasters; and
• reduce the exposure to risk, harm and/or severity of a natural hazard’s impacts, including reducing the recovery burden for governments and vulnerable and/or affected communities.

DRF Round 3 opened on Wednesday 22 January 2025.

DRF Round 3 will close at 5:00pm (ACDT) on Wednesday 2 April 2025.

The DRF Round 3 Guidelines are available here.

You can also access the Guidelines on the NEMA Website.

Individual agencies/organisations are unable to submit DRF applications directly to NEMA. All submissions must come through SAFECOM.

Only state and territory governments are eligible to apply for DRF funding via an overarching application to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). SAFECOM as the South Australian (SA) lead agency will collate the application package on behalf of the State. 

As the lead agency for all SA applications, SAFECOM will accept project proposals from state government, local government, non-government organisations, businesses, universities and other education/training entities, social enterprise and community groups.

A list of eligible and ineligible applicant types can be found in Section 4 of the DRF Round 3 Guidelines.

Applicants may deliver projects across multiple jurisdictions; however, they must have a significant South Australian-based component.

Further information on multi-jurisdictional and national projects can be found in Section 7.2.3 of the DRF Round 3 Guidelines.

All applicants must provide a co-contribution of eligible project expenditure (either cash or in-kind) in line with the percentages set out by the Australian Government.

Further information on co-contribution requirements is set out above and can be found in Section 3.1.2 of the DRF Round 3 Guidelines.

The minimum total project value (Commonwealth funding and co-contribution combined) is:

• $0.5 million for infrastructure funding stream projects, and
• no minimum amount for other project types.

There is no maximum grant amount, but grants cannot exceed the total amount of available project funds ($197 million).

Up to $138 million has been allocated to infrastructure projects in round three.

Up to $59 million has been allocated to other activity types.

Refer to the table in section 5.1.2 of the DRF Round 3 Guidelines for more information.

For a full list of Round 1 and 2 successful projects please visit

Disaster Ready Fund | NEMA

A list of eligible and ineligible hazard types can be found in section 5.1.1 of the DRF Round 3 Guidelines.

Optible AI is a hosted end-to-end grants management platform. Used by several other state government departments, Optible simplifies the process of receiving, assessing, managing and communicating about project proposals for DRF Round 3.

We are proud to be working with Optible, a South Australian-based start-up based at Lot Fourteen, for DRF Round 3.

No applications for DRF Round 3 will be accepted via email. All submissions are to be made via the Optible platform.

If you are unable to access the Optible platform or require an alternative method of submission please contact the grants team on (08) 8115 3926 or at safecom.drf.@eso.sa.gov.au

For the purpose of DRF Round 3, the definition of ‘Business as Usual’ activities is:

‘Standard capital works or recurrent essential services of Commonwealth, state, territory or local government bodies that the responsible body would ordinarily be expected to undertake with internal funding such as maintenance (including repairs) and renewal of roads, buildings, drainage networks, telecommunications, open spaces and other existing assets. Investments in new assets/services or asset/service enhancements (i.e. expansions or upgrades) that deliver additional and/or wider resilience or risk reduction benefits to a community will generally not be considered business as usual for the purposes of these Guidelines.’

Once your application has been received via the Optible platform SAFECOM will undertake quality assurance checks to ensure submissions meet the eligibility criteria and are accurate and complete.

Eligible applications will then be reviewed by a SAFECOM-appointed panel who will submit the most competitive applications for assessment by NEMA. SA can submit a maximum of 50 proposals in Round 3 for consideration by NEMA.

NEMA’s Coordinator General (or their delegate) recommends projects to the Minister for Emergency Management for funding approval, based on advice from the Assessment Panel.

The Minister for Emergency Management decides which applications are successful.

For detailed information regarding the assessment process please refer to Section 7.2.1 and Section 8 of the DRF Round 3 Guidelines.

The following documents must be submitted as attachments with your application:

• Evidence of applicant type
• A clear business case for the proposal
• Evidence of consultation where required
• The Indicative Budget Template is required to be uploaded in the Optional Additional Attachments section of the form
• For joint applications: letters of support from each project partner listed in the application
• For multi-jurisdictional projects: confirmation from the lead agency in relevant states or territories that they have no objections in principle to the project being implemented in their jurisdictions
• For infrastructure projects:
  • Cost benefit analysis
  • Copies of relevant designs and approvals
  • Evidence of ownership/permission to use land/infrastructure being built/upgraded on
  • Quantity surveyor estimates

Further information on attachments can be found in Section 7.6 of the DRF Round 3 Guidelines.