Guardian, Overwatch, Phoenix-RapidFire, Athena… there’s no doubt these systems have rousing names. But how can fundamental research be integrated into the products that NSW fire-fighting authorities use day-to-day on the ground?
On the last day of July, end-users from the NSW RFS and DCCEEW-NPWS invited BNHRC researchers, Fire & Rescue NSW and others to make sense of the alphabet soup from AFDRS to SPARK.
It was an essential insight into how prolific models, applications and tools work together in the fire management space. Participants gained a deeper understanding into the challenges of incident control, and academics and government explored how BNHRC research could support practitioners. Even for some of the most experienced fire researchers in the Centre, this was the first time in their career that the fire management life cycle has been explained in detail by NSW fire-fighting authorities.
To complete the picture, RFS and NPWS personnel also talked about governance, intelligence and operational issues, and NPWS discussed their new cultural safety strategy that is in development.
Research translation is a pressing need in natural hazard management, and the workshop was arranged just as the BNHRC was awarded $200,000 in additional funding by DCCEEW specifically for research translation.
This grant will be used to advance scientific research communication, translation and utilisation activities relating to both the BNHRC and the former NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub (‘the Hub’).
Thanks go to David Field, Mel O’Halloran, and many others from the RFS and FRNSW, plus Ross Peacock, Patrick Schell, Brenton Marchant, Andrew Deane and Felipe Aires from NPWS, for making the workshop happen.
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