People live in landscapes. They assign value to these landscapes and the elements in those landscapes. Importantly, the things that people value as amenity, for example the trees and the associated natural features, also comprise the risk. How people manage the land and perceive the risk of fire depends on these alternative values.
Researching the social construction of risk in the landscape will involve the study of people living near or in the natural bushland environments.
The aim of this research is to make the associations and experiences that influence people’s responses to fire management more transparent, hence providing planning and land management agencies with an insight of how the community would like risk to be managed and a better understanding of the impediments involved in hazard mitigation so they can address these in their planning and decision making processes
