Darwin Living Lab Symposium 2025

Adapting to heat through community focussed solutions

The Darwin Living Lab 2025 Symposium provides an opportunity to share with the community its work to progress Darwin as a cool and thriving capital of the North. The symposium is an opportunity to bring together community, industry and government practitioners, to learn and exchange local knowledge on heat mitigation, urban planning and tropical design.  

The event details:

  • Date: 11 September 2025
  • Time: 8:30 AM (coffee and registration from 8 AM) to 12:30 PM
  • Venue: Festival Learning Room, CDU Danala – Education and Community Precinct, 54 Cavenagh Street, Darwin City, NT, 0800
  • Cost: free!

 

Register here

This years’ symposium has a focus on delivering heat mitigation outcomes for the people living, working and visiting Darwin – empowering people to take action to stay cool in Darwin’s warming wet-dry tropical climate. We will discuss topics such as:

  • Busting myths about human thermal comfort
  • The impacts of heat on health
  • What technologies can help us stay cool and how do we use them.

See program overview below

Soapbox Sessions: creating a cooler and more vibrant Darwin

As a finale to the Symposium we will host a ‘soapbox session’ where we encourage local and community voices to share their passion on how the public spaces of Darwin can be improved and made cooler and more vibrant.  The rules of the soapbox session are:

  • Register for the soapbox session via email: darwinlivinglab@csiro.au
  • Maximum of one presentation slide.
  • Maximum of 3 minutes for each soapbox presenter.

 

Preliminary program outline

Arrival and Welcome 

8:00 

Arrival, registration, coffee and networking 

8:30 

Introduction and housekeeping 

Molly Upstill (Event MC), Founder and Director of The Top Half and Tropics PR & Communications. 

 

Welcome to Country 

Session 1 – Place-based innovations for cooling and greening

8:40 

Northern Territory Government and City of Darwin planning 

 

Keynote: Nature solutions for future Singapore (TBC)

Dr Jeff Seow, Director of Centre for the Science of Urban Nature, National Parks Board, Singapore  

 

Engineered shade using climbing plants: case studies from Darwin, Cairns and Singapore. 

Dr Natthanij Soonsawad, CSIRO 

 

Panel Session: Planning achievements, barriers and opportunities for Darwin. 

10:05 

Morning Tea 

Session 2 – health impacts of heat 

10:30 

Keynote: Health impacts of heat extremes 

Ollie Jay, Professor of Heat and Health, University of Sydney  

 

Sweat, Strain & Sirens: Extreme heat, humidity and emergency department demand in the NT. 

Alyson Wright, Acting Executive Director, NT Health 

 

Advanced thermal comfort metrics for Darwin 

Mahsan Sadeghi, Stephen Cook, CSIRO 

Session 3 – creating a cooler and more vibrant darwin 

11:30 

Soapbox talks: finding opportunities for collaboration. 

3-minute community presentations. 

 

Darwin Living Lab status and future research 

Dr Tim Muster, CSIRO, Darwin Living Lab Project Manager 

12:30 

Symposium Close 

 

 

4 pm 

Optional Walking Tour: 1 hour walking tour of heat mitigation and greening projects in Darwin city