@article {bnh-5650, title = {Where to prescribe burn: the costs and benefits of prescribed burning close to houses}, journal = {International Journal of Wildland Fire}, year = {2019}, month = {06/2019}, abstract = {

Prescribed burning is used in Australia as a tool to manage fire risk and protect assets. A key challenge is deciding how to arrange the burns to generate the highest benefits to society. Studies have shown that prescribed burning in the wildland{\textendash}urban interface (WUI) can reduce the risk of house loss due to wildfires, but the costs and benefits of different arrangements for prescribed burning treatments have rarely been estimated. In this study, we use three different models to explore the costs and benefits of modifying the spatial arrangement of prescribed burns on public land, using the south-west of Western Australia as a case study. We simulate two hypothetical scenarios: landscape treatments and WUI treatments. We evaluate the long-term costs and benefits of each scenario and compare the results from the three models, highlighting the management implications of each model. Results indicate that intensifying prescribed burning treatments in public land in the WUI achieves a greater reduction in damages compared with applying the majority of the treatments in rural areas. However, prescribed burning in the WUI is significantly more expensive and, despite additional benefits gained from this strategy, in most cases it is not the most economically efficient strategy.

}, keywords = {benefit-cost analysis, fire management, fuel treatment, house loss, Prescribed burning, preventative mitigation, risk, trade-off, wildland fire economics, Wildland-urban interface}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1071/WF18192}, url = {http://www.publish.csiro.au/WF/WF18192}, author = {Veronique Florec and Michael Burton and David J Pannell and Joel Kelso and George J. Milne} } @conference {bnh-2950, title = {Think long term: the costs and benefits of prescribed burning in the south west of Western Australia}, booktitle = {AFAC16}, year = {2016}, month = {08/2016}, publisher = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, organization = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Brisbane}, abstract = {

Wildfires are a worldwide phenomenon that can cause significant damage to ecosystems, life and property (Gill 2005; Bowman et al. 2009). Every year in Australia large, uncontrolled fires burn in a variety of landscapes destroying economic, environmental and social assets (Williams et al. 2011). But wildfires are also a natural, inevitable and vital element of the Australian environment that cannot (and should not) be eliminated (Pyne et al. 1996; Pyne 2006). Hence fire management must be an integral part of land and ecosystem management (Bradstock et al. 2012b; Burrows and McCaw 2013).


In recent years, the frequency and severity of large wildfires have increased in most of the vegetated landscapes around the world (Bowman et al. 2009), including Australia. For instance, the fires of Black Saturday on February 2009 caused the highest loss of life and property from a wildfire in Australian history (Teague et al. 2010). The total cost of the Black Saturday fires was estimated to be AU$4.2 billion (Attiwill and Adams 2013). These large fires and losses occur despite advances in fire-fighting technology, greater suppression capacity, considerable suppression efforts, and record expenditures in wildfire suppression (Toman et al. 2011; Attiwill and Adams 2013).

}, author = {Veronique Florec and David J Pannell and Michael Burton and Joel Kelso and George J. Milne} } @article {bnh-1803, title = {Economic Analysis of Bushfire Management Programs: A WA Perspective Report}, year = {2013}, abstract = {

Bushfires can cause considerable damage to ecosystems, life and property. Protecting human and environmental assets is becoming more difficult as the wildland{\textendash}urban interface expands in Australia. Fire managers can plan for and manage bushfire events to a greater extent than other large natural disturbances such as cyclones and earthquakes. However, fire strategies that have sought to respond to the increasing bushfire threat with greater suppression capacity do not appear to solve the problem of catastrophic bushfires. Although suppression capacity and the use of technology in bushfire management have greatly increased, the frequency of disastrous fires appears to follow an increasing trend.

Improved understanding and comprehensive appraisals of bushfire costs and benefits are needed in order to devise fire mitigation and management programs that optimally allocate resources and express informed, evidence-based judgements about trade-offs between available options. The aim of this project is to provide a comprehensive economic evaluation of alternative fire management programs in Western Australia in order to determine the optimal allocation of scarce resources for bushfire management.

In this paper we present our initial investigations into the application of the cost plus net value change (C+NVC) model to bushfire management programs in Western Australia.

}, isbn = {978-0-9806759-6-2}, author = {Veronique Florec and David J Pannell and Michael Burton and Joel Kelso and Andrew Mellor and George J. Milne} } @article {BF-2381, title = {Efficient simulation of wildfire spread on an irregular grid}, journal = {International Journal of Wildland Fire}, volume = {17}, year = {2008}, month = {2008}, pages = {614}, abstract = {A cell-based wildfire simulator that uses an irregular grid is presented. Cell-based methods are simpler to implement than fire front propagation methods but have traditionally been plagued by fire shape distortion caused by the fire only being able to travel in certain directions. Using an irregular grid randomises the error introduced by the grid, so that the shape of simulated fire spread is independent of the direction of the wind with respect to the underlying grid. The cell-based fire spread simulator is implemented using discrete event simulation, which is a much more efficient computational method than conventional wildfire simulation techniques because computing resources are not used in repeatedly computing small updates to parts of the fire whose dynamics change infrequently, namely those areas of a fire that move slowly. The resulting simulator is comparable in accuracy with traditional fire front propagation schemes but is much faster and can therefore be used as an engine for fire simulation applications that require large numbers of simulations, such as in the role of a risk analysis engine.}, doi = {10.1071/WF06147}, author = {Johnston, P and Joel Kelso and George J. Milne} } @article {BF-1052, title = { Efficient simulation of wildfire spread on an irregular grid}, journal = {International Journal of Wildland Fire}, number = {17, }, year = {2008}, month = {10/08/2008}, pages = {614-627}, url = {http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/WF06147.htm}, author = {Johnston, P and Joel Kelso and George J. Milne} } @article {BF-1053, title = {Overview of bushfire spread simulation systems.}, year = {2005}, institution = {BCRC}, type = {Literature review}, url = {http://www.bushfirecrc.com/sites/default/files/managed/resource/uwa_simulators_overview.pdf}, author = {Johnston, P and George J. Milne and Klemitz, D} } @article {BF-1051, title = {Modelling wildfire Dynamics via Interacting Automata}, journal = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science}, number = {3305}, year = {2004}, pages = {395-404}, url = {http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/ComplexSystems/Literature/ModellingWildfireDynamicsViaIA.pdf}, author = {Dunn, A and George J. Milne} }