Published works

In most Australian jurisdictions, the use of prescribed fire is promoted on the basis of its efficacy in mitigation of risk. Despite this, formal attempts to evaluate effects on risk to people, property and environmental values across different jurisdictions are generally lacking. In particular, there is no basis for assessing the generality of attempts to predict risk in response to any particular strategy for use of prescribed fire (e.g. the 5per cent target recommended by the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission). General principles therefore need to be developed about how to apply a risk-based approach across widely varying environments, human communities and combinations of key management values.

In this Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre project, researchers from the University of Wollongong, Western Sydney University and the University of Melbourne have come together with end users across southern Australia to design a project to systematically investigate how risk to any particular management value will respond to variations in the spatial location and rates of treatment. Project outputs are currently being moulded for utilisation by end users in a dedicated tool, the Prescribed Fire Atlas, which will guide the implementation of ‘tailor-made’ prescribed burning strategies to suit the biophysical, climatic and human context of all bioregions across southern Australia.