New online - April 2020

A whole collection of new CRC research is available online this month, including research reports, journal articles, books and completed postgraduate theses.

CRC reports

Dr Jeff Kepert, Dr Kevin Tory, Dr Dragana Zovko-Rajak, David Wilke and  Serena Schroeter from the Bureau of Meteorology have written a report for the CRC project Improved predictions of severe weather to reduce community impact. The report discusses a new thermodynamic tool for predicting the potential for pyrocumulonimbus formation, the Pyrocumulonimbus Firepower Threshold, which aims to predict the minimum fire power that is necessary to trigger deep convection.  

The report for the CRC core project Catastrophic and cascading events: planning and capability was written by Andrew Gissing (Risk Frontiers), A/Prof Michael Eburn (Australian National University) and Prof John McAneney (Risk Frontiers). This report provides insights into the preparedness for catastrophic disasters based upon a review of the global literature and discusses implications for practitioners to assist in strengthening capability and capacity to reduce the likelihood of becoming overwhelmed.

Celeste Young from Victoria University has written an annual report for the Diversity and inclusion: building strength and capability core CRC project. The report summarises the work undertaken during the second phase of the research. During this second phase, the research team has focused their activities around key findings and new needs that emerged from previous research as they continue to build their diversity and inclusion framework. They have also continued their case study approach in the economic and community areas, and opened out the organisational area to look across a number of different organisations.

An annual report for the CRC project Fire coalescence and mass spotfire dynamics has been written by Prof Jason Sharples from the University of New South Wales and Dr James Hilton and Dr Andrew Sullivan from CSIRO. The report summarises the progress of the first year of the project’s second phase. In particular, the research has continued to develop the pyrogenic potential model by incorporating the effects of pyrogenic vorticity. This has resulted in the world’s first capability to model dynamic modes of fire propagation such as vorticity-driven lateral spread using a two-dimensional simulation framework.

Bhiamie Williamson and Dr Francis Markham from the Australian National University and Dr Jessica Weir (Western Sydney University) have written a report for the CRC project Hazards, culture and Indigenous communities. In this paper, they describe the population geography of Aboriginal peoples affected by the 2019–2020 bushfire season in New South Wales and Victoria, and the geography of Aboriginal legal rights and interests in land across these states.

The CRC core project Fire spread prediction across fuel types has had three new reports published this month. The first report, written by Amila Wickramasinghe, Dr Nazmul Khan and A/Prof Khalid Moinuddin from Victoria University, outlines a physics-based simulation of firebrand and heat flux on structures in the context of the Australian Standard AS3959. In the second report, written by A/Prof Moinuddin, Dr Tehmina Khan (RMIT University) and Dr Duncan Sutherland (University of New South Wales), Froude number analysis showed that relative humidity can lead to change in the fire propagation mode (wind driven vs buoyancy driven), but the greater factor appears to be grass height (fuel load). The third report by Dr Nazmul Khan, Dr Sutherland and A/Prof Moinuddin studies the effect of canopy top heat flux on different atmospheric stabilities, suggesting that atmospheric stability may affect the rate of spread and pollution dispersion, especially in the case of unstable stratifications.

The annual report for the Fire surveillance and hazard mapping CRC project was written by Prof Simon Jones, Dr Karin Reinke and Dr Chermelle Engel from RMIT University. The report describes the background, research approaches, key milestones, a utilisation study and the outputs of the research team’s Himawari-8 satellite active fire detection research.

Journal articles

Hossein Derakhshan, Dr Yasuto Nakamura and Prof Michael Griffith from the University of Adelaide and Prof Manicka Dhanasekar (Queensland University of Technology) , researchers on the CRC project Cost-effective mitigation strategy for building related earthquake risk published the journal article Simplified calculation of roof accelerations in existing low-rise symmetric unreinforced masonry buildings with flexible diaphragms in the journal Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering. The work presents a formulation for simplified evaluation of the roof acceleration response for the purpose of assessing non-structural components in unreinforced masonry buildings with flexible diaphragms excluding torsional effects.  

The paper Children, bushfire and climate change by Dr Briony Towers from RMIT University was published in the Advocate: Journal of the National Tertiary Education Union. The research falls under the CRC project Child-centred disaster risk reduction which aims to develop cost-effective programs that reduce the risk and increase resilience for children, schools, households and communities, based on a child-centred disaster risk reduction framework.

Dr Steven Curnin, A/Prof Benjamin Brooks and A/Prof Christine Owen from the University of Tasmania have the journal article A case study of disaster decision‐making in the presence of anomalies and absence of recognition published in the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management. The paper details research undertaken for the CRC project Improving decision-making in complex multi-team environments which examines team monitoring, decision making and organisational learning in emergency management teams.

Books

The book Disaster Education, Communication and Engagement, written by Neil Dufty (Molino Stewart), draws heavily on research from multiple CRC projects and presents a detailed framework to guide the design and evaluation of tailored disaster learning programs, including information that links disaster resilience with sustainability and climate change learning.

A/Prof Janet Stanley, Prof Alan March and Dr James Thompson from the University of Melbourne, along with Prof James Ogloff from Swinburne University have authored the book titled Feeling the heat: International perspectives on the prevention of wildfire ignition. The book aims to join up the story on wildfires to provide a strategic perspective on the vital but international neglected topic: the prevention of wildfire, and relates to the CRC project Urban planning for natural hazard mitigation.

A new book by Dr Anna Lukasiewicz (Australian National University) and Prof Claudia Baldwin (University of the Sunshine Coast), Natural Hazards and Disaster Justice: Challenges for Australia and Its Neighbours, uses real world case studies in Australia and Asia to reveal geographic, social and structural inequities that lead to increased risk and vulnerability to natural hazards. The policy, legal and practical implications within the emerging field of disaster justice have been captured in the book that draws on the research from the CRC Policies, institutions and governance project. 

CRC student completions

Sesa Singha Roy’s Masters thesis Development of an interface using penalisation method for improving computational performance of bushfire simulation tools has been accepted by Victoria University. Her study intends to decrease the computational cost of physics-based fire simulations and improve physics-based models by including more complicated driving winds.