Lightning-caused bushfire is a significant concern for fire management agencies worldwide. Unlike other ignition sources, lightning fires often occur in remote and inaccessible locations making detection and suppression particularly challenging.
Dr Nicholas Read’s PhD investigated models for forecasting the day and location of lightning-caused bushfire ignitions. Nick’s research produced models that take daily gridded weather and environmental variables and output daily gridded predictions for ignition likelihood. These outputs can be used operationally, as well as in conjunction with spread models such as Phoenix Rapidfire to improve long-term risk forecasts.
Nick is now Chief Technology Officer at Anditi, where he looks at how information can be leveraged from large-scale LiDAR data sets.
His thesis is available here.
