Smoke as a byproduct of Prescribed Burning has a number of legislative, health and social implications for fire fighting agencies in New South Wales. Due to topography and meteorological factors the Sydney basin is particularly susceptible to smoke management issues.

In 2010, the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS) commenced a project to develop a smoke dispersion system. The project funded by a National Disaster Resilience Grant created a web based interface that links CSIRO’s models Cubic Conformal Atmospheric Model (CCAM) and The Air Pollution Model (TAPM) to an ESRI based mapping module to produce mapped dispersion forecasts in hourly map or audio visual form.

The presentation discusses context, steps to automation, application of the model in an operational setting, future evaluation process and potential improvements.