Dr Neil Burrows

Dr Neil Burrows

Researcher
About
Dr Neil Burrows

Dr Neil Burrows has more than 40 years experience working with Western Australian government conservation and land management agencies as an applied bushfire scientist, primarily in forest and desert ecosystems. Neil spent 14 years as the Director of Science at the WA Department of Conservation and Land Management, and Department of Environment and Conservation, and was a key industry advisor for both the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC and Bushfire CRC. He now runs his own fire research consultancy, FireNinti Consultancy. 

Project leadership

This project was commissioned and funded entirely by the Office of the Inspector-General Emergency Management Queensland.

Lead end user

This study is identifying the thresholds beyond which dynamic fire behaviour becomes a dominant factor, the effects that these dynamic effects have on the overall power output of a fire, and the impacts that such dynamic effects have on fire severity. This will necessarily include consideration of other factors such as how fine fuel moisture varies across a landscape. The research team is investigating the conditions and processes under which bushfire behaviour undergoes major transitions, including fire convection and plume dynamics, evaluating the consequences of eruptive fire behaviour (spotting, convection driven wind damage, rapid fire spread) and determining the combination of conditions for such behaviours to occur (unstable atmosphere, fuel properties and weather conditions).
Research team:
The project aimed to improve understanding of fire and atmosphere interactions and feedback processes through running the coupled fire-atmosphere model ACCESS-Fire. ACCESS-Fire is an important research tool and has the potential to be a critical operational tool. It will assist in informing fire management decisions as increasingly hazardous scenarios are faced in a changing climate. Further deliverables from the project include the preparation of meteorological and simulation case studies of significant fire events as publications, installation and testing of the ACCESS-Fire coupled model on the National Computing Infrastructure; and preparation of training material to support operational implementation of research findings. The project has demonstrably achieved the objective of building and sharing national capability in fire research and has provided fire and meteorology expertise during high impact events in support of end-users inside their operational centres.
Mika Peace Conference Poster 2016
14 Aug 2016
Coupled fire-atmosphere models show three-dimensional interactions between a fire and the...

Send a message to Dr Neil Burrows (via CRC)

User Contact