Mid-Year Work Recap
What Future Fire has been up to
Wow, we blew right past July and are in August already! I didn’t even get a chance to say ‘I can’t believe the year’s already half over’. Now it’s 7/12 over. Definitely time for a recap. So what’s been happening?
Upwards to the jagged peaks of Mt Publication
Burn prioritisation
I’m currently writing up a project I worked on for the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (my employer about 4 acronyms ago). It’s a neat little study borne of their desire to establish efficient methods for prioritising prescribed burning and other fire management interventions. Why prioritise? Bah, how could you ask such a question! We do, we must, all of us, all the time. The question is whether you want to to be able to explain why your limited resources were spent here and not there. Dangerous territory, I’ll admit, offering up a reason for your actions. Any sensible government might think twice before doing something so rash.
Anyway, we’ve thrown our mother lode of risk modelling simulations at the question of how to direct effort. The crux of the matter was whether we can predict the outcome, in terms of risk mitigation (or the lack thereof), purely on the basis of local conditions. Specifically, if we look at things like vegetation type, fire history, house density, elevation, aspect and so on, right here in the area to be treated (the ‘burn block’), can we tell how effective the treatment will be? The short answer is no. We found that the most influential factors were what was happening over a much bigger area than any individual burn block. Weather in particular, and to a lesser extent the overall rate of fuel treatment (i.e. the sum of many individual burns) told you much more than whether any individual block was burnt or not.
As you’ll expect, the picture is much more complex than this. I’ve omitted lots of details, and our findings are inextricably tied to our project’s unique collection of data, assumptions, study areas etc. Still, it’s a modest contribution that moves things a little further than they were before. A reviewer may disagree, which is why I need to soften them up with a punny title. I’m thinking ‘The forest or the trees? Burn block and landscape contributions to wildfire risk mitigation from prescribed burning’. I would dearly love to submit this thing before the end of the year.
What makes a good fire simulator?
Once I’ve gotten the above paper to a state fit for sharing with co-authors, I’ll circle back to one that’s just come back from co-authors, about fire simulators. Not my finest first draft, my coauthors generously told me, but with that and other nuggets of co-author wisdom, I can fashion it into a second draft, which will bring it perilously close to submitting to a journal. This paper is a literature review. For beginners, a review can be a priceless introduction to a topic, saving time and pointing the way towards important work, knowledge gaps and the meaning of it all. For an expert, a review is a great way to tell whether the authors know what they’re doing, or whether they haven’t cited your work.
This paper is part of a very social sciencey Natural Hazards Research Australia-funded project I’ve been working on over the last year with colleagues from Melbourne and Deakin Universities. We have been talking to users and developers of fire simulators, trying to understand the state of play in Australia. If we can figure out what’s working and what isn’t for different users, use cases (e.g. tactical, strategic, research) and jurisdictions, we might be able to offer some pointers for how to steer future development and use of these fascinating and important tools into the future.
A sneak peak of the results: it’s not just a fire simulator’s ability to mirror reality that matters (although that does matter quite a lot), it’s whether good things happen when they are used. This bring us into less technical and frankly far messier territory. What are good fire simulator practices? Are users supported? Can outputs be effectively communicated? Are good decisions made? What are the pieces of the fire simulator ecosystem? How much do developers, users and their audiences talk to each other? If you thought it was hard to predict how a fire will spread, try predicting all that stuff. I would dearly love to submit this thing before the end of the year.
Overnight weather and a few seeds
Once I get the above two off my plate, I’ll make a beeline for a paper that’s about four years late, on overnight fire weather conditions in NSW during the Black Summer of 2019-20. It’s an interesting study but it’s hopelessly tied up in feelings of guilt and anxiety, which are making me avoid it. If all goes according to plan, I’ll send a first draft to co-authors before the end of the year. This weather paper and the two above are the only well-formed papers I have in the works. There are three others in the early stages of planning, one on future fire (funny that), one on supporting the next generation of fire researchers and practitioners, and one on developing evidence briefs for fire. Who knows if or when they’ll reach first draft stage.
Coattail riding
Luckily for my career, I have some publications in the works that other people are leading. Being co-author on someone else’s paper is a bit like being a guest rapper on someone else’s album. They do most of the hard work and you just pop in for a cameo on Track 8. Not to downplay the importance of a good rap, it can make the difference between a good song and a great song. Anyway, collaboration is one of the cooler parts of being a scientist. Play your cards right and people will want to work with you (more than once), opening the door to all kinds of interesting, fun and rewarding things. There are several publications in this category, some only just beginning, some on the verge of submission, and one which was cruelly rejected by a major journal recently, condemning the author start again at another journal. One is big enough to warrant it’s own heading.
IPCC for fire
When I mentioned the State of Wildfires 2023-24 report to a colleague, I half-jokingly described it as like an IPCC report for wildfire. That’s not really what it is, but it accurately conveys a few things: one, it’s big (our dear leader Matt Jones is clearly not interested in half measures); two, it’s international; three it aims to be a resource for scientists and decision-makers and anyone else interested in fire. My minor role was being a regional expert (along with Sarah Harris) for this neck of the woods, which meant trying to put some of the numbers Matt and friends churned out from satellite imagery into context. As you can imagine, not every hectare burnt by fire means the same thing. We had a very brief go at describing some of the meaning of the Australian fire patterns presented in this epic report. There is about to be a great deal of media fanfare about this report, but the spoiler alert here is that the report provides a very cool snapshot of fire activity in 2023-24 compared to the two and a half decade satellite record, along with an analysis of a few extreme fire events, including whether they have the fingerprints of human-caused climate change on them.
My humble contributions to the Project-ocene
I have several projects on the boil. When I get smarter I will just do one project at a time. My current projects include
What makes a good fire simulator (mentioned above). We are have just submitted a draft of the final report to our partners in industry. This one has been challenging because it has involved interviews, workshops and a questionnaire. People have a lot to say about simulators and it’s quite hard to sum up! I haven’t even been doing all the work either. That duty has fallen to up and coming hotshot researcher Caitlin Symon, who I’ve had the pleasure of working with on the project.
Fire website. I’ve already written about this. That was the prototype and it’s much further along now. We even just scored $40,000 in funding from Melbourne Climate Futures to add climate change information to it. Stay tuned for a preview.
Fire modelling platform. Led by another up and coming hotshot, spatial guru Amelia French, the idea of this project is not so much to develop a model to explain some aspect of fire (like area burnt), but to sell the idea of making models. It’s meant to be a bit of a toy that people can play with, twiddling various knobs and seeing how models change, developing the mental muscles for thinking about fire modelling.
Evidence briefs for fire. We are holding a workshop at Melbourne Uni on August 19 to discuss the topic of evidence briefs for bushfire. Evidence briefs are widely used in the health and medical fields. Should we have them for fire? This should be a really interesting event. There is a narrow vision of what this could be - something incredibly helpful to busy fire managers trying to make sense of mountains of data - as well as a broader one, which is nothing other than the question of how we sum up what we know about fire. This gets at things like different knowledge systems, ways of communicating, transparency, trust and much, much more.
EMCAP Network. I am chairing the inaugural executive committee of the early and mid-career academics and practitioner network of Natural Hazards Research Australia. Yes that’s a lot of words and that’s why we’re sticking with the slightly odd EMCAP. You’ll get used to it. There’s lots of mundane things involved in setting up a committee from scratch, but we’ve got a great group of keen beans, support from NHRA and we’re determined to make a positive difference in supporting and connecting the work (and workers) of academia and industry in the natural hazards space.
Victorian climate science report. The government is putting together a big report, the last of which was five years ago. We kicked in some bushfire information for it. There will be a big song and dance about this when it is released later this year.
There’s a really interesting project going out to tender at the moment, about evaluating big and complex environmental programs. I’m a sucker for that kind of thing, but I’m hoping to support rather than lead an application. As you can see, I’ve already got too many projects.
My ARC Mid-Career Industry Fellowship will be kicking off before too long, and there’s a boatload of admin to do for it. There’s also an information session for all grant winners in Canberra, which I’d love to go attend in person but I just can’t justify the time away and impact on the family, given various other things going on. My aim is to smoothly complete all of the above projects before this one starts mid-next year, so I can just focus on that for a while. Stop laughing at me! If all goes to plan, this entire list will be all Industry Fellowship stuff for the next four years from mid-2025 onwards (I’ll get tenure after that).
All the other stuff
Get a recommendation in on a paper at the International Journal of Wildland Fire, now that all reviewer reports have come in. I must have asked about 15 people before we finally got two to accept.
Catch up with some Westpac Research Fellow happenings.
Do some HR-related stuff for me (training) and some people that report to me.
Do a few student-related things (comments, marking, providing references, seeking funding for travel)
Provide some input to a creative project around fire communication being dreamed up by the dashing Evelyn Lambeth (a Westpac Scholar at UTas) and some other very cool and talented people scattered across the globe
Chat with a school committee I’m on about introducing some more substantial Indigenous material into our graduate researcher handbook e.g. cultural awareness training, engagement with Indigenous communities, Indigenous knowledge systems.
Renew some society memberships
Hand over the chairing of an academic integrity committee to the new chair and co-chair (aren’t you proud of me, I’m clearing my project list!)
Prepare some slides for an Australian Academy of Science event in Victoria, celebrating new Fellows and medal winners including yours truly
Re-submit an application for a ‘Shaping Australia’ award for our fire group
Do some prep for the final instalment of some leadership training the school has put on
Prepare a guest talk for a Sydney Uni ecology group
Think about what I’ll say at a fire-themed Eureka Prize event the Australian Museum is putting on
Think about using some incredible fire-themed photos and videos the amazing Eddy Summers has prepared for me (see below)
Chat with the amazing David Shooter about some incredible fire-themed drawings he’s cooking up for me (see below)
Finish reading Slow Productivity by Cal Newport, about how to do less, work at a natural pace and obssess over quality
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I updated this post to reflect the proper attribution for the incredible Mt Solitary prescribed burn shot on the lower left, which was taken by Emanuel Conomos. As part of my exclusive deal with photographer extraordinaire Eddy Summers, I have also gained access to some brilliant work by other photographers, like Emanuel and Alan Daniels. Woohoo!