Resource Catalog
Document
In Australia there have been many efforts to identify fire behaviour research needs and knowledge gaps. The present review of fire behaviour knowledge gaps (which should be read in conjunction with the associated report on Fire Behaviour Knowledge in Australia (Cruz et al. 2014)) focuses on applied science questions, in particular those that describe knowledge gaps or research needs that have been identified as limiting our present capacity to understand and predict fire propagation and other bushfire behaviour phenomena in support of fire management activities such as wildfire suppression and prescribed burning. As a result, this review focuses on fire behaviour aspects only. In order to better understand end-user needs, we sent out a request to Australian land management agencies with Fire Behaviour Analyst (FBAN) capacity, inquiring about what they perceived to be their main knowledge gaps from the standpoint of predicting fire propagation and other bushfire behaviour phenomena. This report seeks to elucidate the principal findings garnered from these discussions. To better synthesize the analysis of the survey results we divided the knowledge gaps into the following seven distinct components for the purposes of discussion: 1) fuel characteristics and availability; 2) fire spread sustainability and build-up phase; 3) end-user identified need for new fuel type specific fire rate of spread models; 4) extreme fire behaviour; 5) fire behaviour models to support prescribed burning operations; 6) accessory fire models; and 7) topographic effects on fire propagation.
Cataloging Information
- Australia
- bushfire
- extreme fire behavior
- FBAN - Fire Behavior Analyst
- fire propagation
- fire spread
- fuel characteristics
- fuel type
- rate of spread
- topographic effects