Fire is an integral component of Australian landscapes, influencing ecological, economic, cultural and social values. Wildfire, by contrast, can be a destructive force that poses a significant risk to built and natural communities. Governance of fire systems must manage the broad benefits of fire with the risk of large, uncontrollable wildfires. This management must take place over an extended timeframe and at scales ranging from national to local in order to deal with the properties of dynamic, spatiotemporally connected fire systems.
Existing frameworks and tools available for understanding wildfire risk are not well suited to this scale of scenario exploration and collaborative strategic decision making. Therefore, this research aims to:
- create a computationally-efficient quantitative model to understand the factors affecting the spatial connectivity of fire processes
- further develop this model to estimate wildfire risk by incorporating ignition and suppression components
- use this model to explore the temporal development in risk and evaluate treatment cost-effectiveness under different scenarios.
