Imagine you are an incident controller viewing a computer screen which depicts the likely spread of a bushfire that’s just started. The display shows houses and other structures in the fire’s path, and even the demographics of the people living in the area, such as the number of people, their age spread, whether households have independent transport, and whether English is their second language. In addition, imagine that you can quantify and display the uncertainty in both the fire weather and also the type and state of the vegetation, visualising the sensitivity of the expected fire spread and impact to these uncertainties. It will be possible to consider “what if” scenarios as the event unfolds, and reject those scenarios that are no longer plausible. The advantages of such a simulation system in making speedy, well-informed decisions has been considered by a group of Bushfire CRC researchers who have collaborated to produce a “proof of concept” for such a system, demonstrated initially on three case studies.

The system has the working name FireDST (Fire Impact and Risk Evaluation Decision Support Tool). FireDST links various databases and models, including the Phoenix RapidFire fire prediction model and building vulnerability assessment models, as well as infrastructure and demographic databases. The information is assembled into an integrated simulation framework through a geographical information system (GIS) interface. Pre-processed information, such as factors that determine the local and regional wind, and also the typical response of buildings to fire, are linked through a database, along with census-derived social and economic information.

This presentation provides an overview of the FireDST simulation “proof of concept” tool and walks through a sample probabilistic simulation constructed using the tool.