FireAUS: Bushfire relative risk ratings

While previous scientific research has largely focused on the physical attributes of fires and their landscape-level impacts, FireAUS concentrates on properties at risk at the urban-bushland interface. This focus represents a paradigm shift for bushfire risk assessment, from hazard-centric to integrative risk assessment involving exposure and vulnerability analyses. The project develops FireAUS bushfire risk ratings at an address level, information that is important to property owners, the insurance industry, city councils and emergency services.

The project has comprised three major components:

• Learning from the past,
• Estimating property site-specific attributes, and
• Developing tools to enable the calculation of bushfire risk ratings efficiently.

For further information please read here.

Quantifying bushfire penetration into urban areas in Australia
Geophysical Research Letters, 31, June 2004, L12212, doi:10.1029/2004GL020244.

The extent and trajectory of bushfire penetration at the bushland-urban interface are quantified using data from major historical fires in Australia. We find that the maximum distance at which homes are destroyed is typically less than 700 m. The probability of home destruction emerges as a simple linear and decreasing function of distance from the bushland-urban boundary but with a variable slope that presumably depends upon fire regime and human intervention. The collective data suggest that the probability of home destruction at the forest edge is around 60%. Spatial patterns of destroyed homes display significant neighbourhood clustering. Our results provide revealing spatial evidence for estimating fire risk to properties and suggest an ember-attack model.

For more information please download the paper here.

How many bushfire prone addresses are there in Australia?

For the total addresses analysed (8.2 out of 10.9 million addresses nationwide), about 4.1% of addresses are exposed to greater bushfire risk, being immediately adjacent and very close to extensive bushland (about 80 m); about 500,000 addresses are located with distance Group 2 (130 m); and about 80% of all addresses are located beyond 700 m. Further analysis is in place to determine how these percentages vary from one state to another, one local government area to another.

For further information please read here.

(A similar version of this article was published in the January/February 2005 issue of Australasian Science magazine. A PDF copy can be downloaded here.)

Counting bushfire-prone addresses in the Greater Sydney region

Chen, K. 2005. Counting bushire-prone addresses in the Greater Sydney region. Proceedings of the Symposium on Planning for Natural Hazards - How Can We Mitigate the Impacts? University of Wollongong, 2-5 February 2005, 10 pages.

Australian bushfire: Quantifying and pricing the risk to residential properties

McAneney, J. 2005. Australian bushfire: Quantifying and pricing the risk to residential properties. Proceedings of the Symposium on Planning for Natural Hazards - How Can We Mitigate the Impacts? University of Wollongong, 2-5 February 2005, 10 pages.

For more information on FireAUS and its database please contact:

Professor John McAneney or Dr. Keping Chen
Telephone: +61-2-9850 9683
Facsimile: +61-2-9850 9394
Email: riskfrontiers@els.mq.edu.au