Quantifying and characterising vegetation as fuel is essential for informing a wide range of fire management activities such as assessing bushfire risk, planning fuel treatments, and managing smoke emissions.

Classifying and quantifying fuel is complex and includes assessing a range of characteristics. Sam’s research investigates the utility of point clouds for fuel hazard estimation. The project will explore the use of image based point clouds generated from consumer-grade cameras and terrestrial laser scanners for describing cover, height and structure characteristics of below canopy vegetation. Terrestrial and airborne platforms will also be compared to identify the advantages and disadvantages of each technique in different landscapes.