New online - August 2019

This month, several new CRC research publications have become available on the website, including research reports, journal articles and completed postgraduate theses.

CRC 2018-2019 annual reports

These annual reports from CRC projects are now available;

• Improving flood forecast using remote sensing data – by A/prof Valentijn Pauwels, Prof Jeffrey Walker, Dr Stefania Grimaldi, Dr Ashley Wright and Dr Yuan Li – this project is integrating remote sensing of data on soil moisture and flood extent with rainfall and runoff models, which will lead to more accurate flood predictions.
• Cost-effective mitigation strategy for flood prone buildings – by Dr Ken Dale, Dr Tariq Maqsood and Martin Wehner – this project is providing evidence-based retrofit strategies for decisions concerning buildings with the greatest vulnerability in Australia.
• Cost-effective mitigation strategy for building related earthquake risk – by Prof Michael Griffith – this project is developing strategies to mitigate damage, injury and business disruption associated with the earthquakes in the most vulnerable buildings of Australia’s cities.
• Coupled fire-atmosphere modelling– by Dr Mika Peace, Dr Jeff Kepert and Harvey Ye – this project is researching interactions with topography, pyro-convection, dramatic wind changes, water vapour dry slots, plume development and spotting processes.

CRC reports

A symposium report has been written by A/Prof Michael Eburn from the Policies, institutions and governance project. The report summarises a workshop held as a part of the project and reviews presentations given by attendees and their findings.

A report from the Enabling sustainable emergency volunteering project, written by Dr Blythe Mclennan and Dr Tarn Kruger, presents findings from an on-line, qualitative survey of 48 community sector representatives from across the states of Australia. 

Celeste Young and Prof Roger Jones from the Diversity and inclusion: building strength and capability project have released a report on a workshop held at Victoria University that looked into the diversity of organisations and developing inclusive skills.  

Journal papers

Several CRC research articles featured in the July edition of the Australian Journal of Emergency Management;

• Shared responsibility, community engagement and resilience: international perspectives is a research piece written by former CRC researchers Dr Jim McLennan, Dr Karen Reid and Prof Ruth on a project that was examining aspects of shared responsibility.
• New research from the Urban planning for natural hazard mitigation project has been released as a research paper titled Urban planning: historical changes integrating bushfire risk management in Victoria, written by CRC researchers PhD student Constanza Gonzalez-Mathieson and Prof Alan March. 
• CRC researcher and former CRC PhD student Dr George Carayannopoulos from the University of Sydney has written an opinion piece titled Crisis management and public policy that outlines reasons why crisis management shouldn’t just be focused on natural disasters and extreme events but should also include mainstream public policy discussions.
• Dr Timothy Neale and Dr Will Smith from the Hazards, culture and Indigenous communities project explore in their article titled Indigenous people in the natural hazards management sector the suggestion that the involvement of Indigenous peoples in the management of natural hazards is increasing.
• Divulging data: how numbers and figures are helping South Australia looks into development of a new data analysis tool created by CRC researchers for the use of the South Australian Fire and Emergency Services Commission.

Lisa Fountain, Dr Matelena Tofa, Dr Katherine Haynes, Dr Mel Taylor and Dr Sue Ferguson from Macquarie University have published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction on Older adults in disaster and emergency management: What are the priority research areas in Australia? which looks at Australians aged over 65 years and their vulnerability to natural hazards.

Former CRC PhD student Dr Rachael Quill, A/Prof Jason Sharples and Dr Leesa Sidhu have had a research paper published in the Environmental Modelling & Assessment journal as part of the CRC project Fire coalescence and mass spotfire dynamics titled A Statistical Approach to Understanding Canopy Winds over Complex Terrain.

CRC student completions

Dr Bryan Hally’s thesis Methods for background temperature estimation in the context of active fire detection work has been accepted by RMIT University and the University of Twente as part of a dual badge program. Dr Hally’s thesis focused on the estimation of background temperatures and improvements to estimation using multi-temporal techniques.

Dr Grigorijs Goldberg has had his thesis titled Remote sensing of tree structure and biomass in north Australian mesic savanna accepted by Charles Darwin University. He developed a new approach for measuring biomass/carbon stocks in savanna vegetation.  

Associate student Dr Mona Ziaeyan Bahri’s PhD thesis titled The sensitivity of the empirical mode decomposition and its application on environmental data, has been accepted by the University of New South Wales and focused on the subject of time series analysis and its application to environmental data sets relating to natural hazards. 

Associate student Angela Gormley’s Masters research, titled Effects of Sydney coastal dry sclerophyll forest litter on fuels and fire behaviour in Hornsby Shire, at the University of Sydney has been accepted and used empirical data to characterise the physical and chemical attributes of litter, a component of forest and woodland fuels that is particularly important for propagation of fire.