New science for future burns

New Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC research projects about ecosystem and community resilience, and prescribed burning have commenced for the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP).

The Evaluation of ecosystem resilience data project, lead by Dr Matthew Swan (University of Melbourne) will analyse biological monitoring data collected by DELWP across 2017-18 to minimise the impacts of bushfires. Gathering the data through this project will help DELWP to maintain natural ecosystems and deliver services to improve biodiversity, forests, water and carbon storage.

Dr Thomas Duff (University of Melbourne) will lead the Identifying planned burn windows project, which will assess how prescribed burning windows in Victoria have changed since 1972. The project team will collate evidence on how long a prescribed burn can take place in a given area, which will inform how DELWP conduct prescribed burning in the future.

To enhance community resilience, the Application of self-evacuation archetypes project, led by Ken Strahan will analyse the behaviour of people evacuating during a bushfire. This research will be conducted by testing several scenarios across a range of bushfire risk reduction strategies. The research will support community engagement processes and assist DELWP with better understanding the effectiveness of bushfire risk reduction strategies and their impacts on communities.

More research undertaken for DELWP will commence in the coming months.