New online - July 2019

24 Jul 2019

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New research is available online.

New reports, journal articles and PhD theses are now available.

CRC final reports

Written by Dr Jessica Weir, Dr Timothy Neale and Dr Liz Clarke, the final report for the Scientific diversity and uncertainty in risk mitigation policy and planning project has been published. The report addresses the use and utility of science and other forms of knowledge by natural hazard practitioners, and the meaning this holds for risk mitigation work.

CRC 2018-2019 annual reports

Two annual project reports are now online.

Optimising post-disaster recovery interventions in Australia by Prof Mehmet Ulubasoglu. The project is examining the socio-economic cost of natural disasters in Australia and the effects on impacted communities, with case studies on the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires and 2010-2011 Queensland floods.
From hectares to tailor made solutions for risk management by Dr Hamish Clarke, Dr Owen Price, Dr Matthias Boer, Brett Cirulis, A/Prof Trent Penman and Prof Ross Bradstock. The report describes the background, research approach and key milestones since the previous annual report and focuses on the research outputs informing the development of the Prescribed Fire Atlas.

CRC reports

A workshop report Multi-scaled calibration of high-resolution burnt area and fire severity mapping, is out now, by Dr Andrew Edwards. Part of the Tools supporting fire management in northern Australia project, the report outlines and summarises the results from an international workshop of remote-sensing scientists.

Journal papers

A new paper by Dr Paula Dootson, A/Prof Dominique Greer, Sophie Miller and Prof Vivienne Tippett from the CRC project Effective risk and warning communication during natural hazards titled Overcoming Ambiguity: Conflict Between Emergency Warning Messages and Socio-Environmental Cues has been published in Prehospital and Disaster Medicine. The paper explores how conflicting cues exacerbate community non-compliance with emergency warnings.

Dr Nazmul Khan, Dr Duncan Sutherland, Rahul Wadhwani and A/Prof Khalid Moinuddin have released a paper in Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering as part of the Fire spread prediction across fuel types project that is looking at the fundamental assumptions of Australian building standard AS 3959. The paper, titled Physics-Based Simulation of Heat Load on Structures for Improving Construction Standards for Bushfire Prone Areas, discusses the potential for using physics-based simulation to evaluate building designs.

Published in Remote Sensing, Long Wang, Xingwen Quan, Binbin He, Dr Marta Yebra, Minfeng Xing and Xiangzhuo Liu have written an article titled Assessment of the Dual Polarimetric Sentinel-1A Data for Forest Fuel Moisture Content Estimation. Their study, as part of the Mapping bushfire and hazard impacts tested the performance of C-band Sentinel-1A data for retrieval of forest fuel moisture content by coupling the bare soil backscatter linear model with the vegetation backscatter water cloud model.

From the Improving flood forecast skill using remote sensing data project, Dr Stefania Grimaldi, Dr Guy Schumann, Ashkan Shokri, Prof Jeffery Walker and A/Prof Valentijn Pauwels have written about the challenges, opportunities and pitfalls for coupled hydrologic/hydraulic modelling at the large scale, recently published in Water Resources Research.

PhD student Graeme Riddell, in collaboration with Adj/Prof Hedwig van Delden, Prof Holger Maier and Aaron Zecchin have a paper titled Exploratory scenario analysis for disaster risk reduction: Considering alternative pathways in disaster risk assessment published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. The paper reports on exploratory scenarios conducted to consider the dynamics of natural hazards and society’s exposure and vulnerability to them.

CRC student completions

PhD student Dr Mengran Yu’s thesis Modelling the effect of fire on the hydrological cycle has been accepted by the University of Sydney. Dr Yu’s thesis analysed the relationships between bushfires, prescribed fires, soil carbon, forested catchments and water quality.

CRC student Bill Calcutt’s Masters thesis has been finalised and accepted by the University of Wollongong. Valuing volunteers: better understanding the primary motives for volunteering in Australian emergency services applied the Schwartz Theory of Basic Human Values and associated Portrait Values Questionnaire survey to determine the shared and contrasting values of a large state-wide emergency service volunteer workforce. 

CRC associate student Dr Kaitlyn Watson has had her thesis, The roles of pharmacists in disaster health management in natural and anthropogenic disasters, accepted by Queensland University of Technology. Her research took an all-hazard approach in examining the multiple practice areas where a pharmacist’s expertise could be of use.

Associate student Dr Diana Kuchinke thesis on Investigating bird responses to fire in the Heathy Dry Forests of Victoria, Australia has been accepted by Federation University Australia. Her study looked at the pressures that forest birds are under across 84 different sites, such as agricultural and urban development, the rising frequency of extreme weather conditions and prescribed burning within the landscape, and the ways that the birds responded to these pressures.