Research Advisory Forum - bushfire mitigation

Landscape management remains the single largest contributor to bushfire mitigation, with prescribed burning one of the most significant coordinated vegetation management programs. Research continues to improve our understanding, use, planning and control of fire as a tool for reducing risk in the environment – and at the same time, changes in the climate and growing health concerns from smoke are throwing up new challenges that cannot be ignored. 

The bushfire mitigation Research Advisory Forum brought researchers together with burning practitioners and planners, to explore how the knowledge emerging from research programs across Australia is influencing our landscape management and the challenges confronted in the field with the adoption of new techniques and planning concepts.

The workshop Practical application of fire and fuels research in prescribed burning was run as a Research Advisory Forum of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, in partnership with the Australian Institute of Disaster Resilience’s Centre of Excellence in Prescribed Burning. This workshop was hosted at the New South Wales Rural Fire Service Headquarters, and formed part of the 6th International Fire Behaviour and Fuels Conference in Sydney which ran from 29 April to 2 May 2019.

CRC projects featured in this RAF were:

• Delivering effective prescribed burning across Australian ecosystems
• Tools supporting fire management in northern Australia
• Fire surveillance and hazard mapping
• Fire coalescence and mass spotfire dynamics
• Threshold conditions for extreme fire behaviour
• Mapping bushfire hazard and impacts
• Delivering effective prescribed burning across Australian ecosystems 
• Optimisation of fuel reduction burning regimes

The workshop breakout discussions focused on three streams: environment and climate; planning and risk; and tools for prescribed burners.