Future Fire's To Do List
Just what the Dickens does a scientist these days do, anyway?
I am forever struggling to get organised. I make lists. I use the Sticky Notes app (not to be confused with actual sticky notes). I periodically try out entirely new systems for planning my day and week, prioritising activities, extracting more ‘deep work’ out of myself, checking how I’m doing and just generally straining to feel a bit less out of control at work. The new year is a special time, full of optimism, calm and hope for a more ordered state of affairs. This usually lasts two to three weeks.
Here’s what’s on the plate, the burner, the backburner, in the pantry and all over the bench at the moment*:
I’m trying to finish off a short paper (my first ‘brief communication’, if I pull it off) on the health costs of wildfire smoke under climate change. This project emerged from the NSW Bushfire Hub, which I was a part of until my move to Melbourne last year. A successor to the Hub has just been announced and it includes a node (i.e. people) here at the University of Melbourne. I aim to submit this paper by the end of February.
I’m trying to finish off another short paper on overnight weather conditions during the Black Summer fires of 2019-20 in southeast Australia. This project also emerged from the NSW Bushfire Hub, not from the Hub’s core business but as a part of the work that the Hub did for the NSW Bushfire Inquiry in the immediate aftermath of the Black Summer fires. We essentially paused all of our Hub projects so that we could respond to the needs of the Inquirers, producing a high volume of high quality science in a really short time, all of it publicly available. I’m also aiming to get this one to a journal by February’s end.
I’m working on a very high level review of the impacts of climate change on bushfire risk in Victoria as part of a communications project for the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. The department is still known to most of my colleagues by its former acronym, DELWP (the W was silent and stood for water, there was also environment, land and planning). The project is being led by my colleague Andrea Rawluk and is being administered by Natural Hazards Research Australia (NHRA). Aiming to knock this over in the next few weeks.
We’ve just found out we were successful with another project we applied for through NHRA. I won’t spill the beans until it’s officially announced, but this one will occupy much of my attention in 2023. Lest you get the wrong idea, I’ve been part of four unsuccessful NHRA applications in the last six months. I am preparing another one that I hope will do better, more on that another time.
Over the next six months I’ll be working on two projects for NSW fire managers, one on prioritising burn blocks for prescribed burning and the other on developing new models for prescribed fire severity. Both build on pilot projects I ran back at Wollongong Uni and need to be done by mid-year. I will be leaning heavily on my FLARE colleagues for help. I’m looking forward to spending more time with the fire squad here at Melbourne Uni this year.
Over the next year I’ll be working on a new bushfire risk communication platform as part of a small project funded by the Wildfire Futures initiative here at Melbourne. Quite excited about this one, despite its size. This is a seed project, so hopefully El Nino holds off long enough to allow it to grow into something.
Aside from all of the above, I was hoping to make major progress on two new projects in 2023, as part of my Westpac Research Fellowship. The aforementioned are part of the fellowship too, to be clear, but I’ve marked out the new ones with my boss as substantial enough to sink my teeth into. I’m hoping to get the first shovel into the ground on both by March.
Speaking of Westpac, they have kindly facilitated some mentoring for me with a previous Fellow, which has been amazing. Really valuable sharing ideas and getting feedback from someone who’s been there, done that and shares a few of my views on academia, work-life balance and the universe.
I’m part of a few national and international collaborations which are really cool but which I am thankfully not leading. My aim is merely to hold up my end of the bargain and not annoy anyone too much.
I’m sitting on a couple of committees with intermittent duties. One is the School Academic Integrity Committee. We recently held ‘educative response’ meetings for students whose assignments had issues picked up by their subject coordinators and/or the Turnitin text-matching software. It’s our job to help the students understand the issues and the importance of academic integrity so that they don’t run into any more problems down the track. I’ve also recently been invited to join the committee running NHRA’s 2023 Disaster Challenge. The aim is to get novel ideas for hard problems in natural disaster management, with an emphasis on early career researchers. Looking forward to this one. Finally, our school is going through a merger of sorts and I expect I’ll be part of some temporary committees charged with smoothing the transition over the next couple of months.
I’ve been chatting to some designers from the Victorian College of the Arts about collaborating on future fire communication. I have had such fantastic experiences working with designers that I’m super keen to try more. Hopefully there’ll be some things to share (maybe even here) before too long.
I’m trying to figure out which conferences to attend this year and next. I generally really enjoy travelling, meeting old and new people, hearing new things, chatting about my work and so on, but my wanderlust appears to have temporarily abandoned me. I don’t know if it’s the move to Melbourne, the pandemic, wanting to be with my wife and kids, being a bit of a homebody or what, but I’m struggling to get on the front foot here, despite my incredibly fortunate position of having funding to attend a couple of events. Will hopefully make a plan in the next couple of weeks.
I’m working through a long list of people to have coffee with, here at the Uni, or based here in Melbourne. So much going on, so many interesting people. I’m really enjoying this part of the move. I’m also pestering a few people about how one gets a promotion to Associate Professor. It seems like a bit of a joke even contemplating it, but you’ve got to be in it to win it, as a former boss used to say.
Recording a couple of guest lectures on fire weather and climate change for a course here. They’re due over the next few weeks. Lucky for me I’m working from existing slides. I did a practice run with lots of stuff ups and the kids in the background the other day.
Going to have a quick skim of my ‘cost-benefit analysis of wildfire and wildfire management’ library, after being contacted by an international group, based in Canada, doing some work on the topic. May not have anything to contribute, but will be curious to see what they come up with.
Got a review due in a couple of weeks for a journal article. Fired off two last week, which were based on revisions and so were a bit more straightforward. Will try not to take any more on for a bit.
Mulling over writing a reply to a journal which published a paper with some dubious assumptions. Might be easier just to do our own work rather than wade in there.
Going to make another run at skimming the latest research. I was all set to do this last week but computer said no. This is one of the first things to go out the window when things get busy.
Organising a catchup with the people behind PyroLife, a European program(me) aiming to prepare the next generation of wildfire scientists. There’s something brewing here and I’m doing some groundwork. I was lucky enough to be Deputy Chair of the EMCR Forum a few years ago and it would be amazing to help kickstart something similar in the natural hazards space. I’m thinking empowered, independent, bold, inclusive and representative. For starters.
A few bits and bobs happening with the Oceania Regional Committee of the IUCN’s Commission on Ecosystem Management. I have to hand it to the IUCN for coming up with lofty titles. Since last year, i’ve been Regional Focal Point for Australia and Special Advisor to CEM Oceania. In practice this means I get to spend time with a really cool group of people spread across the Pacific, New Zealand and Australia, trying to make connections, get things going but mostly for me, learn a lot.
Gearing up for an interview with 2RRR’s Einstein A-Go-Go about our recent paper in a couple of weeks. I don’t see how 2023 will be able to top this.
I’ve been chatting with an incredible Westpac Scholar and founder of Freddy Match, Roxy Foulser-Piggott, about an idea I’ve been mulling over for some time around cross-jurisdictional policy comparison (trust me the elevator pitch makes it sound way cooler than that).
Gearing up for the 2023 Science at the Local season. Sorting dates and speakers, planning some special joint events, building on some fun stuff we’ve done in the past. Will be front loaded, as the better half of the team is headed overseas with his family for the second half of the year, and I remain a non-walkable distance from the Blue Mountains most of the time.
*Any items not appearing on this list were omitted purely for fictional purposes and their absence in no way reflects their importance, urgency or profundity.
What’s on your to do list? Bonus points if you share your to be list.