Cooperation First

By Gary Morgan

With summer heating up in the southern hemisphere and 2009 getting underway, Australia and New Zealand's first nationally coordinated, multi-disciplinary Bushfire Cooperative Research Center entered the final phase of its seven-year life. A major challenge now is to secure a future for a national fire research program.

Building on the earlier research efforts of individual agencies, the Bushfire CRC's research focus over the past five and a half years has been to find improved ways of reducing the level of bushfire risk for given levels of investment and resourcing by governments and the wider community. The combined efforts of 19 fire, emergency and land-management agencies from Australia and New Zealand, and the research capabilities of some 20 universities and related research providers, is resulting in clear industry and community benefit.

The past 12 months have seen a gradual winding down of the center's previous research focus and an increased emphasis on converting the research effort into operational and strategic reality.

January 2008 saw Australia's new federal minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research announce a wide-ranging review of the nation's innovation system. At the time, the minister highlighted “the vital role innovation plays in boosting [Australia's] productivity and international competitiveness.”

This national review was to consider “all aspects of the current Cooperative Research Center Program.”?From the Bushfire CRC's perspective the minister also stated that, “The [new federal] government is absolutely determined to restore public benefit as one of the primary objectives of the CRC program.” This principle was removed by the previous federal government.

In April, the Stakeholder Council of the Bushfire CRC, which is comprised of representatives of the Bushfire CRC's partner agencies, met for a day of presentations and discussion. It was a most productive and successful event with around 40 participants from each fire and land-management organization from Australia and New Zealand. The council met again in October to further review progress and how to move the center forward in 2009. The council plays a key role in keeping our research efforts focussed on the needs of agencies.

April also saw the launch of a new book, Community Bushfire Safety, which provides an overview of a number of the center's research studies that have been designed to help better understand the important role the community plays in bushfire safety. Jerry Williams, the former national fire director of the U.S. Forest Service wrote the book's foreword. The book is unique to the fire industry, both in Australia and internationally, with its focus on community safety as a key component of bushfire management. The involvement of social sciences in Australian bushfire research only seriously commenced with the establishment of the center.

The center's biggest event for the year, the International Bushfire Research Conference, incorporating the 15th Annual Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council Conference, attracted approximately 1,100 delegates to South Australia's capital, Adelaide, in September. The International Association of Wildland Fire co-sponsored the conference, and local conference participants benefited from the presence of a significant number of international delegates. Australia's national radio network broadcast a number of interviews during the conference, which also were placed on the network's Web site and can be accessed through the center's Web site, www.bushfirecrc.com/events.

The pre-conference workshop in Adelaide tried out a new format that attracted 75 senior people with a working interest in managing all the complexities of a bushfire incident. These included five CEO/chief officer-level participants. At the conference in 2009, which will be held Sept. 22-24 in Gold Coast Queensland, participants will build on the Adelaide experience with pre-conference workshops focusing on engaging conference delegates in a range of research-adoption themes.

Last October, a Fifth-Year Independent Review Panel established by the center's governing board concluded its work with a favorable assessment of the center's research quality, performance against agreed milestones and research adoption processes. The panel members indicated that they were left with a very positive view of the Bushfire CRC, which is a tribute to the combined effort of all researchers, member agencies, board members and staff.

A bushfire research fund has been established and is welcoming donations from the broader community. The fund is on the Register of Environmental Organizations with the Australian government, and donations are tax deductible.

In late 2008, the Australian Government released requirements for the next round of bidding for new CRCs. Building on the success of the current Bushfire CRC, the peak national body and its partners have, over the past year, been coordinating a bid for a new research center under the program.

The research program being proposed has been developed within a context that sees few communities in fire-prone areas in the region believing that they are managing their forests and woodlands, as well as the inherent fire threat associated with them, successfully. Changes in philosophical and organizational approaches to wildland areas over the last 40 years, the expansion of urban populations into the hinterland, and more recently the uncertainties associated with climate change present decision-makers with considerable dilemmas.

The proposed research program is designed to address the broad areas of risk management, carbon, water, biodiversity, and the role of municipal government in fire management. Developing a better understanding of community resilience, structural fires, incident management, and the use of technology also feature in the bid. Successful bids are expected to be announced in July.

Over the next few months the Bushfire CRC will continue seeking international research collaborators to both broaden the scope of the future Australian research program and to widen the opportunities available to individual researchers.

The Bushfire CRC has completed and continues to research several key areas.

The center completed final reports on effectiveness of aerial suppression and on its cost effectiveness. In ongoing research, the center is looking at how agencies respond to the public/government call for more aircraft and at what expense. Researchers are building aircraft scenarios into a fire management business model to provide fire managers with better decision support tools. Also, an analysis of the operational effectiveness of aerial suppression in the 2007-08 season is in progress, together with the analysis of the results of aerial suppression tests at experimental burns conducted in the Ngarkat Conservation Park, South Australia, in early 2008. These tests also compared a range of chemical suppressants (retardant, foam and gel).

The center also completed research projects in firefighter health and safety. One project looked at how to manage smoke. A smoke plume prediction and management model is now operational in fire agencies. This model is useful for land managers for prescribed burns, for urban agencies for toxic industrial plumes, for health agencies for community advice, and for other affected industries, including agriculture, tourism and aviation.

The center also completed its report on the effectiveness of several types of smoke masks under bushfire conditions and its literature review of current smoke sampling and analytical techniques.

In ongoing research on managing eucalypt-dominated smoke exposure, researchers are comparing the impacts of prescribed fire and wildfire, taking in factors such as the contents of the smoke, implications for public health and the impact of releasing greenhouse gases. Another project is looking at firefighter exposure to air toxins by identifying and measuring the toxicity of bushfire smoke. The results of these projects will be used by fire managers to regulate firefighter exposure to smoke during both bushfires and prescribed burns. Also, a better understanding of what is in the smoke can lead to better advice to communities on how to deal with smoke exposure.

Another safety study involved firefighter fatigue. The center published an overview of factors contributing to firefighter fatigue during bushfire suppression work and a report on how bushfire suppression can impact on firefighter health. Research in this area is determining the effect of fatigue, stress, fitness and crew management on the health and safety of firefighters and identifying how this impacts decision-making ability. This project is providing baseline data for agencies to develop fatigue, hydration and fitness guidelines.

In further research, the center is looking at the fireground as a workplace. It will examine what the appropriate standards of safety are and why firefighters still are being injured. Researchers are looking at what the human factors that influence decision-making on the fireground are, such as physical and mental stress, group pressures at crew and management level, and the individuals on thought processes. Early results have been discussed at several research adoption workshops.

A post-graduate researcher is looking at how fire managers and firefighters consider worst-case scenarios — how are they best used to improve decision-making and how they can be included in training programs.

Researchers are studying how to make interagency incident management teams more effective with improved information flows. The results will aid IMTs, both in the rural and urban context, in better understanding how IMT members can work together and how training programs can be structured accordingly.

Another post-graduate researcher is quantifying the work demands of tanker-based fire suppression. This will enable fire managers to better allocate resources for crew management on the fireground.

Researchers have completed a report on assessment methods for grassland curing that includes a tool to better predict curing, fire risk, rate of fire spread, and the fire resources required.

The first nationally consolidated view on the seasonal fire outlook was established two years ago. This is co-ordinated between all Australian states and territories and has provided an essential basis for requests for resource funding for upcoming fire seasons. One such report was tabled in Western Australia Parliament during a discussion on resource funding for the impending fire season. Tools from the National Bureau of Meteorology for gridded fire weather forecasts allow better predictions of fire behavior, while tools to better predict wind changes help protect firefighters and the general community.

A study of blow-up weather conditions led to new knowledge on the dry slots phenomenon. This knowledge is helping fire managers on the fireground plan for and reduce risk.

The Western Australian-based Project Vesta developed new fire-behavior and fuel-assessment models that are being considered by fire agencies.

Continuing research will look at how fire will behave under a warmer climate and drier land. Researchers are describing fuel dynamics and fire behavior from more than 40 experimental burns under very high fire danger weather conditions at Ngarkat Conservation Park, South Australia.

Researchers based in Australia and New Zealand are collaborating on a study aimed at improving the assessment and prediction of grassland curing through the use of remote, satellite imaging.

Another study is developing a universal classification of fuel types and extent of fuel consumption, while another research is developing a semi-physical fire-behavior model for introduced softwood plantations, based on case studies from several recent fires.

Changes in climate almost certainly will result in changes in fire frequency and severity, Bushfire CRC research showed. This finding has many implications for fire and land managers in how land is managed and how resources are allocated.

Bushfire CRC research showed how all fires — prescribed fires and bushfires, from tropical northern Australia to southern alpine country — carry implications for biodiversity.?The presence, frequency or absence of fire is a vital consideration in terms of the maintenance of the health of many ecosystems. While much has been learned about the relationship between fire regimes and biodiversity in a number of ecosystems, significant challenges lie ahead.

Long-term research sites across the high country of Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory have shown the critical impacts of fire on water quality and yield in both the short and long term.?

The same high country research also has shown the critical impacts of fire on both the short- and long-term carbon balance of ecosystems. The effect of fires on soil carbon is emerging as one of the great unknowns in the global carbon cycle. Research on soil carbon will provide essential knowledge for community, industry and government bodies developing emissions trading schemes.

A soon-to-be-published book, Fighting Fire with Fire, discusses the role of fire in Australia's ecosystems, and how to manage fire both for safety and for biodiversity.

Smoke behavior from major fires can be reasonably well predicted with atmospheric models. However, smoke composition at places well removed from the fire front (for example, at distances of 50 to 100 km) is almost impossible to predict using current technology. Research now is identifying a number of classes of compounds that are common in smoke from eucalypt fires, which have the potential to be used in predictive smoke models in the future.

Many plants and animals act as indicator species — that is, they can indicate the effects of fires on a wider range of other species and processes. ?Researchers are looking at a range of soil and litter dwelling invertebrates in areas that differ in vegetation and climate from around Australia to assess the effect of fires on biodiversity.

The center completed research on vehicle burnovers. This study has been adopted by AFAC to refine national guidelines on what to do if caught in a bushfire while driving.

Researchers conducted burning tests on common types of fencing, water tanks, power poles, and windows and decking to determine performance. Based on the research on household building materials, advice was provided to Standards Australia and AFAC on national building standards.

Bushfire CRC scientists evaluated the house losses after the South Australian fires in 2005 and the Canberra fires of 2003. They looked at why some houses burned and others survived. This lead to better advice on how people can prepare and protect their homes.

Ongoing research is looking at why residents still are building without defendable space and in unsafe areas. Research is continuing into other aspects of residential housing, including the surrounding vegetation, external water sprays, roofing, external cladding and gas supply. This will add to the sum of knowledge on community household preparation.

Researchers also are developing a risk analysis model that will assist fire managers and local authorities to develop policies for building at the interface.

Research in this area led to the publication of two books. Community Bushfire Safety is a comprehensive summary of findings from all the community safety projects in the Bushfire CRC, drawing from the social sciences, economics and law. Communities Living with Hazard features Bushfire CRC researchers at the Center for Disaster Studies, James Cook University. It provides new knowledge on how communities understand and respond to the bushfire threat.

A literature review on bushfire arson shows the current state of knowledge, its links to urban arson, the age and background of arsonists, and the times and places of offences. This review has become essential reading for fire agencies and law enforcement authorities attempting to combat arson in bushfire-prone areas.

A review of the legal underpinning of the Prepare, Stay and Defend or Go Early policy analyzed the shift in risk and responsibility between the homeowner and the authorities. This legal analysis is an essential complement to a broader research project. This project is targeting managers responsible for implementing the policy.

A further review of the effectiveness underpinning of the policy looked at historical trends in Australian bushfire fatalities to see how, when and why people die in bushfires. From this analysis, the policy is shown to be well-grounded in the available evidence.

Ongoing research is looking at how we communicate with the unaware, the disinterested, the elderly, the anti-social, the newcomers, and at those living in the interface.

Research also continues on bushfire arson. Fifty-three bulletins have been published and are publicly available for discussion and advice. These publications build the knowledge of who lights fires, why they do it, and what the authorities can do about it.

Further research targets educating children about bushfire risk, making communities resilient to bushfires, and evaluating a range of programs to assess what is the most cost-effective communication model.

Around 250,000 volunteers across Australia assist paid fire agency staff in carrying out bushfire mitigation and suppression operations each year. This volunteer effort is estimated to be worth about $1.2 billion (AUS) to the community annually.

A longitudinal study of new recruits in Victoria identified issues of recruitment and induction after six months, and issues regarding rewards and retention after 12 months.

A study of the impact of mandatory fitness standards on operational volunteer firefighter numbers found more than a third of current members may not meet the fitness standard if it were to be introduced. The report recommends that agencies recruit and retain younger volunteers, increase the fitness levels of current volunteers, and review the roles and tasks of operational volunteers.

Another study uncovered the barriers to volunteering and has led to recommendations on making volunteering more attractive and supported.

Separate surveys of women found a range of barriers to female volunteers that agencies could attempt to address. Some barriers were external (family and work responsibilities, concern about physical demands) others internal (male-designed protective clothing, lack of female toilets, high storage of heavy equipment, some male colleagues not supportive of female volunteers, others overprotective).

Ongoing research will examine how to sustain and build the base. It will look at the impact on employers of volunteers and how employers can be better educated and supported. Employers of volunteers are currently being surveyed on these questions.

What is the impact of volunteering on the wider family and how does this influence recruitment and retention? This study is surveying the families of volunteers.

Research will address how fire agencies respond to issues concerning volunteers and multiculturalism. This study is providing information to agencies as they prepare campaigns to recruit and retain volunteers from non-English speaking backgrounds.

For more information on these and other research projects visit www.bushfirecrc.com.

Gary Morgan is the chief executive officer of the Australian/New Zealand Bushfire Cooperative Research Center.