Project: Fahrenheit 4701
The Problem:
The task of planned burning and wildfire management requires a thorough understanding of the complex interactions of weather, fire fuel composition and the associated chemistry surrounding combustion of typical fire fuel found in the Australian bush.
Across the country, work has been done towards making tools available to fire practitioners to perform the necessary calculations. These vary from single point fire danger calculators to highly complex enterprise systems that are beyond the access of the majority of land managers.
One of the failings of the existing fire danger calculators is the time required to research current and predicted weather conditions then apply the relevant factors to a single calculation that is relevant only to one point in time. Many fires are lost due to the failure of the land manager to identify impending adverse weather conditions.
Even not considering the inherent losses associated with an escaped fire, significant money can be wasted on the mobilisation of aerial ignition appliances, fire crews and heavy machinery if the fire weather conditions are too mild to achieve the desired outcome.
What is required is an easy to use fire danger prediction tool that provides advance warning of any significant changes in fire danger conditions. Crucial to the success of this project is a user interface enabling its use by the majority of the land management community.
The Solution:
Firestarters have recognised this need and produced a simple tool that can provide fire danger predictions using data gathered from Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and using the originally developed formula by Alan McArthur (http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mcarthur-alan-grant-10889), to inform when the impending weather conditions meet their fire management needs.
The product provides fire danger predictions for the next seven days at three hourly intervals.
Audience:
Potential users of this tool include;
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Primary producers
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Large lifestyle block owners
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State land managers
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State and Federal protected area management agencies.
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Emergency response agencies (Rural Fires, CFA etc.).
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Fire management contractors.
