Trying To Catch Fire

And like dogs and cars, are we sure we want to?

Hmm, let’s see, what have I got planned for the year ahead at work?

Monopoly dog chases monopoly car (Source: Rich Brooks via Wikimedia Commons)

Deliver a few projects

• What makes a good fire simulator? Turns out, it’s a good fire simulator ecosystem. Technical wizardry helps but it only gets you so far. I could have told you that!, say the social scientists. In this project we are talking to the people who develop and use computer programs that predict fire spread in Australia. We will then reflect their wisdom back to them in the form of advice for future use and development.

• Prescribed burning prioritisation. Even as I type that phrase it feels Herculean. Our initial results suggest that what happens across a whole landscape - particularly the prevailing weather, and to a lesser extent the amount of fuel treatment overall - is far more important than what happens in any particular burn block. Still, we aim to provide some advice that might help fire managers in NSW prioritise where to place putative treatments.

• Summarise the the story of bushfire and climate change in Victoria. This is for the next version of the state’s Climate Hazards Synthesis report. We aim to give a reasonable picture of climate’s links with fire here in Australia’s south-east, and what this means for climate change impacts. Will anyone read it? I prefer not to contemplate such rude questions.

• Build a toy prototype wildfire risk communication website. We’ve just about knocked up a draft, and I am already feeling the heat from fire managers who tell me it’s not what they need. Bah! This is elegant, simple, clear and will provide inspiration for someone much more talented than me to produce something much better. It’s a spark, dammit.

• Build a toy prototype wildfire risk modelling system. We haven’t started because of assorted administrative malfunctions, but the aim is to develop a simple but flexible system for modelling the relationship between wildfire, climate, vegetation, terrain and past fire. The system will then be able to be deployed for (i.e. pointed at) whatever tickles our fancy - this vegetation type, that time period, this climate zone, that fire season. Bonus points for being able to test out other, existing models. It’s going to be a modelling free for all and again my main hope is to trick inspire someone else into doing a much better job.

• Take the preceding two dot points, roll them into a single website and make the website live, so it’s updated, oh, every month or so. Hey presto, we can look at recent fire conditions and we can see how good our models are at predicting them.

• Hold a talk-fest on the topic of whether it might be useful to write some wildfire evidence briefs. I shamelessly stole this idea from the health and medical sciences, where it’s par for the course to take stock of the available evidence for particular issues, and summarise it in a transparent and accessible way. Could this be useful for fire? We’ll be holding a workshop to find out.

• Design, illustrate, represent! I’ve been working with assorted designers, photographers, artists and animators to see if they can help with creative ways of depicting wildfire, its drivers, its effects, climate change, risk and so on. I don’t want to rush the creative process, but I’m optimistic there’ll be a few things to share here this year. Failing that, stay tuned for some new Four Friends-themed comic strips, which are midway down my list.

Usher in the future of future fire science

• This year I am very lucky. I get to supervise two postdocs, working on the fire simulator and Victorian climate hazards projects. Really, they just kind of do the work and I stand near them, but it totally counts on the CV. I also get to supervise three talented Masters students. Their topics are improved environmental accounting in bushfire risk modelling, doughnut (or donut, if you prefer) pyronomics (this post was prophetic!) and climate change impacts on ignition risk. There’s a good chance an RA (research assistant) will be coming along at some point, to help out with the fancy modelling project. There might even be a PhD student down the fire trail track.

• I will give a few guest lectures on things like fire weather, climate change impacts and risk management. I might also chip into curriculum revisions for the Graduate Certificate in Bushfire Planning and Management.

Recycle something old

• There’s a few grants I applied for that have either been rejected, or soon will be. You’re usually allowed to try again, so I will think about that, after factoring in any feedback from assessors.

Make something new

• I’ve been chatting with some former colleagues about putting a grant in to do some paleo fire work - helping to put flesh on the wispy smoke trails of ancient fire history in Australia. That would be pretty cool. But it will probably be rejected too.

• I’ve been chatting with an Indonesian colleague based at Monash about a project looking at heatwave and wildfire impacts on mental health amongst certain cohorts in Indonesia. Pretty cool, probably rejected, etc.

• I’ll be on the lookout for opportunities to road test topics/ideas I’ve batted about with a few people in recent times:

  • Sprinkling social infrastructure/capital into wildfire risk modelling - how does fire affect it, and how does it affect post-fire recovery?

  • Overnight fire weather climatology (building on my yet-to-be-completed-and-possibly-never-will overnight fire weather during Black Summer project)

  • Fire arguments - what are the different arguments and premises that float around in this area, and can we make them more transparent and tangible?

  • Sustainable fire landscapes - what are the processes at play at the landscape level, and what are the connections from one landscape to another, when it comes to survivable or even thrivable fire regimes? How far can we get by acting local, and how much do we need to think global (or at least next door)?

Commit to some committees

• Let’s see, we’ve got the School Academic Integrity Committee, the School Culture, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee and now the newly formed School Early and Mid-Career Academic Committee.

• We’ve also got the Land Theme of Melbourne Climate Futures, which is aiming to bring together people and ideas for weighing up the multiple complementary and competing uses of land in our warming world.

• Launch the Early and Mid-Career Academics and Practitioner Network of NHRA, which I propose to call the Future of Hazards network. We’re going to connect across disciplines, sectors, states and territories, trying to understand common challenges and build a brighter future.

See some people

• Try to stay connected with the many cool FLAREheads spread across Creswick, Burnley and Parkville and a few other locations. Meet more of the funky homosapien denizens of Melbourne Uni. Work out of the DEECA and CFA offices from time to time. Duck into a conference or two, here and there.

Learn some things

• Do some training; some voluntary, some compulsory. Teach myself some stuff; some on purpose, some by accident.

Find your porpoise purpose

What’s going to be the end result of all this work? First of all, I will be very tired. Second of all, hopefully all this activity will see to it that I have a job to come back to in 2025. (Do I want to come back to a job that makes me this tired? 😬)

But really, isn’t the bigger question, the more important question, Dear Reader, what all of this contributes to the global wildfire crisis? Maybe I’ll solve it! Or at least sow some seeds that, together with others, may one day bring forth a scientific crop capable of aiding, if not abetting, humanity as it strives to co-exist with fire.

Almost certainly, fire disasters will continue to take place around the world, prompting calls for action, new ideas, paradigm shifts and massive funding injections above CPI pay rises for vital experts like me.

But is more science the answer?

By year’s end I’ll probably be in a similar state of confusion about the most effective way to bring about positive change. Rather than choose, I’ll return to the buffet for 45 new and exciting dishes, even though I’ve barely touched the dozen plates already crammed onto my table. I’ll tell myself that far from being a luxury, these diverse and unorthdox connections are in fact pivotal to a genuine understanding of the depth, breadth and to a lesser extent height of the fire/human/earth system.

But is academia even capable of responding to the polycrisis? And does polycrisis want a polycracker?

If academia is the place to spur change, I’ll wonder whether I’m the cowkid to do it. Whether my cowkid-talents and disposition are better suited to other fields of endeavour, like being a beatnik, hermit, gonzo public servant, children’s books author or human shield.

You know what? I would settle for humanity collectively being closer to a sane and coherent relationship with fire (and the planet, and ourselves), regardless of any contributions I may or may not make.

And so as 2024 comes to close, I expect to be once more be sitting in front of my ornate mirror (picked up in a garage sale circa AD 64), candle flickering, playing a mournful (if occasionally rousing) tune on the fiddle, while the landscape outside my window turns to fire, then ash, then something both old and altogether new.