CRC office and the COVID-19 virus

To all our CRC partners,

The dynamic and rapidly evolving COVID-19 situation is affecting us all in ways we are just beginning to understand.

First of all, it is important to say that the CRC is still operating during these difficult times. The CRC staff are now all working at home and are contactable by mobile phone or online.

We assume that all our project teams have access to technology that will allow effective online communication between researchers and end users. If you are having difficulty contacting your project, please reach out to the CRC staff and we will try to help.

However, this is not a business as usual situation. All domestic and international travel has ceased and all events and meetings with a face-to-face component have been cancelled or postponed.

This includes the National Fire Fuels Science Forum planned for last week in Canberra. This highly anticipated forum would have provided invaluable advice to the several national and state bushfire inquiries under way since the horrendous fire season of 2019-20. We now intend to hold this later or offer this through an online webinar program. We are gathering many of the presentations that had been prepared with a view to publishing them on the CRC website.

Other gatherings of CRC staff, end-users and researchers are now taking place online whenever possible.

Regular publications will continue as normal including Hazard Notes on the latest research and a monthly round-up of activities.  Fire Australia magazine, the Australian Journal of Emergency Management are also continuing as usual.

Meanwhile, our Research Management team is maintaining contact with researchers around the country.

As universities and other organisations rapidly reduce their operations, it is anticipated that there will be many requests from project leaders to extend or otherwise adjust milestone delivery dates and requirements. We will work through each on a case-by-case basis. However, all CRC work under the current program must by completed by 30 June 2021.

It is anticipated that postgraduate students will also experience disruption to their projects. Once again, we will work with those students to resolve any issues on case-by-case basis.

The CRC management and Board are currently examining the risks for the CRC associated with the impacts on the university and research sectors more broadly. These impacts may affect the CRC’s ability to meet some of our agreed milestones. The Research team are currently examining all remaining Commonwealth and other contracted milestones and will monitor progress relating to these as the situation evolves.

In summary, the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC remains open for business, albeit under very different working arrangements. If any of this presents an issue for you or your organisation, please contact me or Research Director Dr John Bates to discuss.

We all wish you all the best for good health in the coming challenging months.

Kind regards,

Dr Richard Thornton

CEO