Plenty on new CRC research is available online this month, including research reports, journal articles, book chapters and completed postgraduate theses.
CRC reports
Dr Nazmul Khan (Victoria University), Dr Duncan Sutherland (University of New South Wales) and A/Prof Khalid Moinuddin (Victoria University) have written a report for the CRC project Fire spread prediction across fuel types. The report investigates recirculation regions downstream of a hill-top canopy and captures the results of streamwise mean velocities, mean pressure, Reynolds stresses and streamlines of velocity fields. A report on wind reduction factor software development was also written for the project with Dr Mahmood Rashid (Victoria University) and Dr James Hilton (CSIRO) to lead to a better predictions of fire rate of spread.
The chapter Looking to courts of law for disaster justice was written by A/Prof Michael Eburn (Australian National University) for the book Natural Hazards and Disaster Justice: Challenges for Australia and Its Neighbours. The chapter considers the implications of a desire to look to the courts of law to deliver a form of disaster justice by distributing those losses across the decision makers that contribute to vulnerability, and falls under the CRC project Policies, institutions and governance.
Dr Jessica Weir (Western Sydney University), Dr Steve Sutton (Charles Darwin University) and Gareth Catt published the chapter The theory/practice of disaster justice: learning from Indigenous peoples’ fire management in the book Natural Hazards and Disaster Justice: Challenges for Australia and Its Neighbours. Their research falls under the CRC project Hazards, culture and Indigenous communities which focuses on the risk and resilience priorities of Indigenous communities, the emergency management sector’s priorities for these communities and how these interests interact.
Research by Prof Stephen Dovers was published in the chapter Public policy and disaster justice for the book Natural Hazards and Disaster Justice: Challenges for Australia and Its Neighbours. The chapter considers issues of unequal vulnerability to disasters and uneven access to assistance and decision making from a justice perspective, relating to the research for the CRC projectScientific diversity and uncertainty in risk mitigation policy and planning.
Dr Rahul Wadhwani’s PhD thesis Physics-based simulation of short-range spotting in wildfires has been accepted by Victoria University. His thesis focused on refining two sub-models, pyrolysis and firebrand transport, in the Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Dynamics Simulator.
Associate student Dr James Ricketts had his PhD thesis Understanding the nature of abrupt decadal shifts in a changing climate accepted by Victoria University. His thesis identifies and relates episodes of apparent abrupt shifts in regional climates in Australia and extend this methodology to global datasets and to modelled futures to better inform risk assessments.