Still busy at the CRC

When we finish up at the annual conference we hear the refrain from many that that must be a relief and it is time for rest, however that is never the case at the CRC. The Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC & AFAC conference was the third conference this year we had been involved in organising, as well as numerous events and two Research Advisory Forums. These are all vital engagement opportunities for our end-users to understand what the researchers are doing and allowing them to work together to ensure that the outputs are fit-for-purpose.

In the time since the annual conference at the end of August/beginning of September, we have run the International Day for Disaster Reduction in Australia, and next week will be running the Research Advisory Forum in Canberra. Over the last month we have also been involved in many workshops regarding the research refresh and briefed a number of the AFAC groups on research progress.

Personally, I have presented at a joint Australian, NZ and USA research symposium in Park City, Utah, briefed the Institute of Foresters Australia in Mt Gambier, and taken part in a panel session on prescribed burning at the Bushfire 2016 conference in Brisbane.

While I was in the US I also took the opportunity to visit the folks at the US Forest Service’s Firelab in Missoula. The CRC signed an MoU with the Forest Service in 2014, and this was an opportunity to better understand how we can work better together, and understand where they were going with their ground-breaking work on fire behaviour.  

So even though we are over the hump of the annual conference, the pace is still high!