FireNotes

Fire Note 109: This Fire Note reports on the Fire Impact and Risk Evaluation Decision Support Tool (FireDST), a proof of concept simulation system that aims to provide critical fire planning information to emergency services, government and the public. FireDST is an advanced software program that can be used to understand the potential impacts a bushfire may have on community assets, infrastructure and people.

Fire Note 108: Fire agencies are seeking to understand if and how individuals and households prepare for a bushfire. They need to know if individuals and households prepare in different respects to an equal extent, and the factors that influence bushfire preparedness. This Fire Note examines the link between several potential predictors of why residents prepare for a bushfire and different types of bushfire preparedness activities.

Fire Note 107: Despite the significant resources devoted to bushfire public education, people living in communities at risk of bushfire continue to demonstrate reluctance to adopting bushfire preparedness measures when these measures are communicated through passive, information-based approaches. This Fire Note discusses an action research program that was developed around the Tasmania Fire Service’s Community Development Pilot. Findings from the pilot have facilitated the wider adoption and implementation of community engagement principals into broader Tasmania Fire Service community education programs.  

Fire Note 106: This completed PhD research investigated the teamwork and decision making differences between familiar (pre-formed) and unfamiliar (ad hoc) incident management teams (IMTs). This Fire Note examines the ways in which the performance of pre-formed IMTs was clearly superior to that of ad hoc IMTs, and identifies ways that fire agencies can assist members of ad hoc IMTs quickly become more familiar with each other.

Fire Note 105: There is growing interest for economic information to help inform resource allocation decisions during bushfires. This Fire Note highlights how economic principals can assist, by appraising the breadth of economic information and methods in relation to bushfire management and policy challenges.

Fire Note 104: This Fire Note presents examples of social networks, aiming to understand the quality and characteristics of a social network that can aid bushfire preparedness. In this context, social networks refers to relationships that connect people to each other, creating links. It does not refer to social media. Social networks operate in complex ways, with information passed from one person to the next, often informally. Understanding how and why networks develop provides a basis to understand when and how information from fire agencies and other formal institutions might be passed along the networks.

Fire Note 103: Urban and regional planning has an increasingly significant contribution to make in managing bushfire risk. This Fire Note reports on initial outcomes of research to identify leading practice in spatial planning for bushfire risk and broader emergency management.

Fire Note 102: This Fire Note explains the importance of a knowledge management system for the development of bushfire communication products. It shows the potential benefits of such a system for fire agencies, and outlines how the creation of a knowledge management system supports the Effective Communication: Communities and Bushfire project and broader bushfire research.

Fire Note 101: This Fire Note highlights the importance of gender matters in the Australian bushfire context and considers how the international literature on gender and disaster relates in the areas of risk perception and exposure, preparedness behaviour and communication, and response and recovery. It aims to position gender and bushfire in the context of the wider international literature and recognise gender and disasters as a field of research.

Fire Note 100 is a special edition that looks back on the broad range of fire research projects that have been summarised in Fire Notes since 2005. It also looks ahead to the new areas of fire research that need to be undertaken.