Fuel treatments, particularly prescribed burning, are a key tool used by fire agencies in managing fire risk. Fuel treatment can have a variety of objectives, including reducing fire intensity, preventing spread, preventing ignitions, assisting with community safety, and supporting firefighting efforts.  

To date, the effectiveness of fuel treatments in limiting spread and ignitions has been poorly quantified with field information, apart from a small number of case studies. A better understanding of fuel treatment effectiveness will enhance planning and ensure that treatments are strategically undertaken in the context of fire conditions and response activities.    

This project aims to analyse historic information to establish a quantitative evidence base used for planning fuel treatments and strategic fire suppression. This evidence will be able to be used as a foundation for the development of optimised processes for landscape fire risk planning.   

The project was developed as a collaboration between DEECA and CFA through the Safer Together Program to focus on how treated fuel areas in the 2019/20 fire season impeded fire spread. However, through consultation the scope has been extended to focus on fuel treatment and fire spread more broadly.   

This project will be required to work collaboratively with other Natural Hazards Research Australia-led projects to ensure efficiency of effort and that the outputs are complementary. 

DEECA is seeking a solution in the development of a state-wide, automated analysis and reporting tool that will enable DEECA to assess the effectiveness of planned burning activities against their prescribed objectives in a consistent manner.  

Understanding how planned burning reduces fuels across individual burn units is a fundamental assumption underpinning our bushfire risk models. By developing a tool to provide consistent analysis for multiple burns across Victoria, DEECA will be able to gain significant insight into the effectiveness of planned burns, testing the assumptions underpinning our bushfire risk models and identifying knowledge gaps in the execution of the fuel management program.  

DEECA currently collects fuel hazard and fire severity data across 20% of burns within the Joint Fuel Management Plan (JFMP). The JFMP is developed annually and identifies priority burns to be undertaken each year over three years to meet the risk reduction needs of regions across the state. DEECA is currently unable to utilise fuel hazard and fire severity data effectively within FMS to analyse planned burns. This project will identify the best method to utilise fire severity and fuel hazard data for analysis and use within FMS.  

In addition, DEECA is not able to provide standard reporting on the effectiveness of planned burning activities at an operational level. There is no current method to compare burn objectives with burn outcomes (area burnt, burn coverage, and burn severity level achieved), and fuel hazard change across a treatment area. This is a significant gap in the fuel management program. Development of the Planned Burn Outcome Reporting Tool (PBORT) will support learning and development for regional burn operations staff.  

This project will create an analysis and reporting tool prototype and develop a module which draws data from multiple DEECA digital fuel management sources, including fire severity, fuel hazard, burn unit area, fuel type and ecological fire group, into a single point to analyse and consistently report burn effectiveness.   

The development of the PBORT will enable DEECA to evaluate the success of planned burn activities which will feed into our understanding of the fuel reduction impact of DEECA’s fuel management program, and implications to residual risk calculations. 

Floods across Australia during the period of 2020 to 2022 resulted in severe impacts across diverse sociodemographic and geographical communities. As a result, inquires have identified issues relating to risk reduction, land-use planning and risk communication.

In partnership with our Participants and other key stakeholders, Natural Hazards Research Australia has developed a program of work to address these areas so that further knowledge and evidence can assist to enhance future decision making and policy. 

This project consists of three work packages: 

Work package 1) Understanding the full cost and impact of floods

This work package is focused on better understanding the true costs of flooding, with social impacts considered at short and longer timeframes.  

Work package 2) Flood risk communication

This work package will identify improved methods of communicating flood risk to inform decisions community members make on a floodplain. For example, buying a property, building, or operating a business. It will also look at the way risk is communicated when a flood is occurring to communicate the level of damage likely to be experienced and preparation required. 

Work package 3) Identifying the effectiveness of land-use planning flooding controls on buildings impacted by the 2020/2021/2022 in NSW

This work package seeks to provide an evidence base to understand the effectiveness of planning provisions addressing flooding for buildings that have been built or modified in the last 10 years.  The research will be used to inform consideration of existing legislation, standards and policy from which improved land-use planning can be developed. This work package is aimed at aiding councils and consent authorities to understand the impact current controls are having. It will enable them to continue to implement existing flood controls from assessment through to approval and identify whether further guidance is needed to implement these controls in construction. 

This project will establish a national framework for monitoring and evaluating risk prevention programs through: 

• Work package 1: Evaluating the impact of the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services’ Fight Fire Fascination program, where fire services professionals supports parent and educators to teach children about fire safety through outreach. This package will seek to understand: 
  • the efficacy of the program against objectives, content, delivery and training 
  • the impact of the program on fire play and other behaviours 
  • how to monitor the efficacy of the program on an ongoing basis and build the capacity of staff to do so. 
• Work package 2: Piloting and evaluating a novel program seeking to create targeted disaster preparedness videos delivered through wi-fi captive portals. The concept is designed to provide tourists and tourism workers, who are traditionally harder to reach with preparedness strategies, with targeted information on how to prepare for disasters in their area. Through the pilot, research will work closely with stakeholders at the sites selected for the pilot, to create buy-in and engagement. This package of work will create an understanding of: 
  • the effect of wi-fi captive portal videos have on disaster preparedness knowledge and perception of risk in tourists and tourism workers 
  • how tourists, tourism workers, and tourism businesses perceive and relate to disaster preparedness information delivered through Wi-Fi captive portal videos 
  • how to enhance wi-fi captive portal videos to improve disaster preparedness and user experience 
  • how the effectiveness and cost/benefits of wi-fi captive portal videos compare with disaster preparedness information delivered to transient populations through other channels 
  • how to pilot programs in a manner that can support future scaling to other applications and jurisdictions. 
• Work package 3: The use of the two contrasting case studies, in combination with a literature review, will be used to create a recommended approach for the monitoring and evaluation of similar programs across jurisdictions. Researchers will disseminate their recommendations on monitoring and evaluation approaches to other agencies running risk prevention programs.