Better fire danger ratings

New fire science, including Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC research, is being used to redesign the Australian Fire Danger Rating System (AFDRS). Development of the pilot version, which is currently underway, is the first major update to the system since it was created in the 1960s. 

There is clear imperative for a new system that introduces greater national consistency in communication and warnings, with the recent 2020 Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements Report stating: “During natural disasters the public has an urgent and vital need for emergency information and warnings to ensure they are able to make safe decisions. They need to know what is likely to happen (or has happened), what to do and what to expect.”

The revised AFDRS is a redesign of the original system, ensuring that communities are more aware of risk exposure to bushfire, while also updating the scientific knowledge included in the system – about weather, fuel and how fire behaves in different types of vegetation – to improve the accuracy and reliability of fire danger forecasts across Australia.

The revised system will also be more comprehensive and flexible, providing a greater ability to understand and predict localised fire danger risk with increased scientific accuracy, rather than applying the same fire danger across large areas, as is the case with the current system. In coming years, when the new system is in operation around Australia, all fire agencies will be able to better predict bushfire danger in their regions, leading to better warnings, more efficient use and distribution of firefighting resources across borders, improved community awareness of risk, and increased safety for both firefighters and the community. 

The new AFDRS was initially developed with various grants from EMA, through the national disaster reduction program as CRC research, following a recommendation from the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. In 2015, the CRC secured support from the Commonwealth Government through the Australia and New Zealand Emergency Management Committee, leading to the successful transition from a collection of CRC-managed research, to a fully owned and developed program with the aim of developing a prototype system, managed by the industry for the benefits of the community.

Ongoing development of the AFDRS is now managed by the AFDRS program at AFAC and is being completed through close collaboration with the Commonwealth Government, the NSW Rural Fire Service, the Bureau of Meteorology and several other contributing agencies.

The AFDRS will incorporate multitudes of new research and data, including research from the CRC. For example, the Predicting fire danger ratings from physical measures of fire behaviour project, completed through the CRC’s Tactical Research Fund and led by Dr Stuart Matthews at the NSW RFS, developed a fire behaviour index that will support accurate prediction of the characteristics of bushfires within the new AFDRS. This project has also conducted an in-depth review and update of the rating definitions and tables, as well as fuel maps and models, that can be used in the operational build of the new system.

The AFDRS prototype was trialled by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service over the 2017-18 bushfire season to better incorporate extreme fire behaviour. The AFDRS program team also used the prediction capabilities of the new system to assess how well it might have performed during the 2019-20 season, compared to how well the current warnings system functioned.

The AFDRS is due for launch in 2022. It is planned that the two systems – the old and the new warning systems – will run in parallel during the 2021-22 bushfire season, and that the old system will then be decommissioned in July 2022.

You can learn more about the AFDRS by visiting the AFAC website: www.afac.com.au/initiative/afdrs.