@conference {bnh-3898, title = {A new quantitative smoke forecasting system for Victoria}, booktitle = {AFAC17}, year = {2017}, month = {09/2017}, publisher = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, organization = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Sydney}, abstract = {

Smoke dispersion is a key concern for Government agencies. Government has a responsibility to protect community health in response to smoke events and to minimise the impact of smoke from planned burning.\  To inform community warnings and planned burn management, quality information is needed to support evidence-based decision making.

The Bureau of Meteorology has operated the HYSPLIT smoke dispersion system for use by fire and land management agencies for around 15 years. Recently DELWP funded research to improve smoke emission and transport modelling in Victoria. This project developed a new multi-tiered quantitative smoke prediction system which is a significant step forward compared with the old system.\  It applies recent observations of Victorian smoke emissions and atmospheric chemistry (as embodied in CSIRO{\textquoteright}s Chemical Transport Model) with the increased numerical capability in ensemble and high resolution weather modelling of the Bureau{\textquoteright}s ACCESS Numerical Weather Prediction suite.

The new smoke forecasting system has 3 tiers; Tier 1: 10-day ensemble forecasts of fire weather and fire danger indices to assist decisions on burn scheduling, Tier 2: 3-day forecasts of ambient air quality and smoke concentration from existing fires to provide background conditions for burns, and Tier 3: 1-day high resolution forecasts of smoke for planned prescribed burns to support go/no-go decisions.

In this presentation we will demonstrate the improved user interface for the smoke dispersion system and provide examples of output for each of the 3 forecast tiers. We will also describe the methodology for verifying the system output, including initial verification results. Finally areas of potential future work will be discussed, including how other jurisdictions can be involved so that this can become a national smoke dispersion system.

}, author = {Monica Long and Alan Wain and Cope, ME and Beth Ebert and Maree Carroll and Kevin Parkyn and Natalie Tostovrsnik} } @conference {BF-4284, title = {Smoke impacts from prescribed burning in Victoria; developing a risk climatology}, booktitle = {20th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation}, year = {2013}, month = {12/2013}, pages = {200-206}, chapter = {200}, abstract = {Following an increase in the frequency of extreme fire weather in recent years and the subsequent loss of life and damage to property, fire agencies in Australia are under pressure to increase fuel reduction burning. However, at the same time, there is an increasing pressure to reduce the risk of population exposure to smoke. Reconciling these competing demands is a major challenge. Currently, wind speed and direction are the main guides used by agencies for estimating regions at risk from smoke plume strikes. However, plume dispersion models and computing resources are now sufficiently developed so that the risk to towns and cities from planned fuel reduction and agricultural fires can also be assessed using these tools. This is of particular relevance in north central Victoria, Gippsland and the Riverina where there is a need to identify those areas of forest and farmland most likely to pose a smoke hazard to nearby towns during the autumn and spring burning seasons. In this paper, we introduce a numerical modelling system which can be used to undertake an assessment of the risk to communities resulting from smoke generated by fuel reduction burning. The paper demonstrates how the system can be used in an inverse modelling mode to investigate the relationship between sensitive receptor- and upwind source regions. Using the Ovens Valley in north-eastern Victoria as an example, we apply the CSIRO dispersion model, The Air Pollution Model ( TAPM) coupled to the CSIRO Chemical Transport Model (CTM) to simulate the dispersion of PM2.5 emitted daily between 11:00 and 16:00 during April 2009 from each 3 km x 3 km grid cell in a 50 x 50 cell domain centred on Harrietville. From these data we can assess the relative impact of each source cell on any receptor cell within the domain. Taking the towns of Myrtleford, Harrietville and Mt Beauty as test cases, we find that the greatest likelihood of smoke impact is from fires close to the receptor cell, however more distant sources are also significant, with the strongest located on the valley slopes. Vegetated source areas in the bottom of the valleys and on ridges have least impact. Harrietville and Mt Beauty, which lie in different valleys, nevertheless have similar source risk distributions, in contrast to Myrtleford, which lies downstream of Harrietville on the Ovens River, and has a totally different source risk profile. Significantly, there is no indication of a prevailing flow for any of the three receptor cells. We discuss how the system can be used to provide a self-consistent framework for testing smoke transport screening approaches for use by fire managers for planning prescribed burning schedules.}, keywords = {Fuel reduction burning, screening modelling, screening tools, smoke hazard, transport modelling}, url = {http://www.mssanz.org.au/modsim2013/A3/meyer2.pdf}, author = {Meyer, C.P. (Mick) and Lee, S and Cope, ME} } @article {BF-1090, title = {Modelling the King Island bushfire smoke}, number = {55}, year = {2006}, month = {9/20/2006}, pages = {93-104}, author = {Hess, GD and KJ Tory and Lee, S and Alan Wain and Cope, ME} }