Fire Note 98: Immediately following the 7 February 2009 Victorian bushfires the Bushfire CRC organised a multi-agency Task Force to investigate and report on three aspects of the fire: fire behaviour; building survivability and infrastructure; and human behaviour and community safety. This investigation involved interviews with more than 500 survivors. This Fire Note reports analysis relating to human behaviour and community safety from 496 of these interview transcripts.
Presentation at Research Forum of the 2012 Bushfire CRC and AFAC Annual Conference.
Presentation at Research Forum of the 2012 Bushfire CRC and AFAC Annual Conference.
Presentation at Research Forum of the 2012 Bushfire CRC and AFAC Annual Conference.
The Bushfire CRC is working with the Attorney General’s department and the various Australian states and territories to develop science to underpin a new fire danger rating system.
The Australian Government allocated $3.6 million under the National Emergency Management Program in 2011 to assist Australian communities better prepare for, respond to and recover from natural disasters and emergencies.
Included among several projects under the Program, is the development of a new fire danger rating system for Australia to assist fire agencies better plan for and respond to fires.
The Bushfire CRC has appointed a project manager to oversee the National Fire Danger Rating Review and Research Project.
Australian firefighting authorities currently use Forest and Grass Fire Danger Indexes (FDI) to assess the risk of fire. The FDI describes the conditions that allow fires to start and continue burning, but does not account for all fire risk factors. For example, topography, fuel availability and fire location are not taken into account in FDI calculations. For this reason, the FDI cannot give a complete account of potential fire danger for making risk management and fire fighting decisions.
The final goal of the National Fire Danger Rating Review and Research Project is to implement a new, scientifically based, fire danger rating system. The system will be spatially explicit and include elements to reflect the potential for damage in addition to weather indices.
The new fire danger rating system will use a series of discrete modules to calculate aspects of fire risk. These modules will measure:
