2011 FIRE WEATHER & RISK WORKSHOP

late Thursday 1 Sept
Friday 2 Sept
Saturday 3 Sept
Sunday am 4 Sept

A 3 day workshop, following the main AFAC/BCRC conference, aimed at addressing key issues with fire weather and risk.

NEWS:

REPORT

Click here to download the final report from the workshop. The PDF file is 3.1MB in size. It has been formally published by Geoscience Australia. It may be cited as:

Mills, G.A., Cechet, R.P. & McRae, R.H.D. (2012). Proceedings of the 2011 Fire Weather and Risk Workshop. Geoscience Australia Record 2012/35. Geoscience Australia, Canberra.
ISBN web 978-1-9222103-12-3

THE NEXT WORKSHOP

We are pleased to announce arrangements for the next Fire Weather Workshop.

The 2013 Fire Weather Workshop will be held in Busselton, WA in May, in association with the BCRC Research Advisory Forum.
The organising committee consists of:

Ralph Smith (FESA) (08) 9323 9528
Andrew Burton (BoM)
Murray Mitchell (DEC)

More details will be posted as they become available. There is a page on the BushfireCRC website, with a poster to dowload.

AUSTRALIAN METEOROLOGICAL & OCEANOGRAPHIC JOURNAL

The peer review of the papers submitted for the FWRW edition of AMOJ have been published. They are on-line at the AMOJ site.

TITLE	AUTHORS	Lo-res PDF	High-res PDF
Pyrocumulonimbus pair in Wollemi and Blue Mountains National Parks, 22 November 2006	Fromm, M.D., McRae, R.H.D., Sharples, J.J. & Kablick, G.P.	#	#
Meteorological dynamics in a fire environment; a case study of the Layman prescribed burn in Western Australia	Peace, M., McCaw, L. and Mills, G.A.	#	#
Mesoscale modelling of two 'drying events': governing processes and implications for fire danger	Badlan, R.L., Lane, T.P., Mills, G.A. and Caine, S.	#	#
Extreme drying events in the Australian high-country and their implications for bushfire risk management	Sharples, J.J., Mills, G.A. and McRae, R.H.D.	#	#
Quantitative bushfire risk assessment framework for severe and extreme fires	Jones, T., Woolf, M., Cechet, B. and French, I.	#	#

Note: We thank Graham Mills for organising these publications, and the AMOJ editor, Blair Trewin.

YET TO COME...

We will soon post on-line the workshop presentations. Watch this space!

Theme: "Research to operations."

Our goals were:

To improve liaison between meteorologists, researchers, risk managers and fire managers;
Progress key national agenda items;
Keep up with the latest developments here and abroad, as a professional development stream;
Provide papers for the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal; and
Produce a report that provides guidance on addressing the issues raised and discussed.

Outcomes:

We are currently producing outcomes from the workshop. Shortly this website will become a valuable resource on fire weather. Please keep watching for updates.

"Report on Fire Weather and Risk Workshop, Bowral, 1 - 4 Sept, 2011". This is currently in draft form, but when finalised will be available in printed form, but also will be posted here in PDF format. Watch this space.
A special edition of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal, for which abstracts are being collected now.
A collection of on-line resources, including PowerPoint presentations and videos, presented at the workshop. When approved there will be a link to this collection here.

Particpants are reminded to make sure that they return feedback forms, permission forms and abstracts as sson as possible, to allow prompt finishing of output.

Concept:

This was aimed at re-starting the useful Fire Weather Workshop series of the '80s and '90s. If, as we believe, we were succcessful, then FWWs will happen every two years. Watch for updates on the next workshop, as discussions are already underway.

Who attended?

We were able to tap into the wisdom of 80 people, including:

Policy and operational fire weather meteorologists,
Researchers into fire weather and fire behaviour systems,
Bushfire risk analysts and managers,
Key staff from fire and land management agencies and state or territory policy staff,
Private sector consultants, providers of services or equipment.

Feedback shows that this was successful.

The Workshop organsiers would like to thank everyone who participated and made this such a successful event!

Agenda:

Our program included:

A show-and-tell of what’s new;
A research review with presentations from the researchers and questions;
Industry-specific issues (research, forecasting and fire management);
Developments in wildfire risk management;
Forecasting practices for wildfires, hazard reduction and risk assessment;
Future research agenda; and
Drafting a report from the workshop.

Program:

Click here for our FINAL program.

In collaboration with the Bushfire CRC and its Science Conference the day before, we invited two key fire weather researchers from the US to participate in the workshop.

Mike Fromm, of the US Naval Research Laboratories, the lead international researcher on violent ypro-convection, currently studying aspects of Black Saturday.
Brian Potter, leader of the Atmosphere and Fire Interactions Research Team at the US Forest Service Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab.

As this is part of a long-running series of workshops, we have posted the outcomes of past events to show what has changed - and what hasn't.

4th Fire Weather Workshop at ACDC, Mt Macedon, Vic, June 1991. Report, outcomes & (for nostalgia) the invite.
5th Fire Weather Workshop at the Craigieburn, Bowral, May 1993. Report, and a special treat RM's hand written notes from the talks!
6th Fire Weather Workshop at Hahndorf, SA, June 1995.Report and abstracts.
7th Fire Weather Workshop at Hobart, Tas, September 1997.

This workshop was organised and sponsored by:

	ACT Emergency Services Agency. Organiser: Rick McRae
	Bureau of Meteorology. Organiser: Graham Mills
	Geoscience Australia. Organiser: Bob Cechet