ISO 31 000 is the international risk management standard. The Victorian State Fire Management Planning Committee has interpreted this standard via its State Strategy as a continuous, seven-step process. It guides committees at the state, regional and municipal levels in the development and continuous improvement of fire management plans.

Within Loddon Mallee and Hume Regions these steps have been interpreted through;
 The Crichton risk pyramid – (after Crichton and Geo Hazards Australia) for risk context, assessment, treatment applying the State level endorsed consequence and likelihood tables.
 The International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) framework for communication and consultation
 The Monitoring Evaluation Reporting and Improvement (MERI) framework for monitoring and reviewing planning.

26 municipal level committees have completed or made significant progress to complete municipal level fire management plans in line with this process.

To provide evidence to support the Committees decision making, over 200 data layers were produced or collated. This included sourcing existing data from ABS and emergency services, and regionally prepared fire intensity scenario mapping for severe, extreme and code red days, and collation of treatment activities. This evidence was paramount to support a diverse range of decision makers in mutually identifying and assessing risk and the most appropriate treatments.

In preparing plans municipal fire management planning committees have considered:
• What are the current strategies and treatments to manage hazard, exposure or vulnerability?
• For which scenarios will they be effective?
• What and where are the gaps?
• How is it best to fill the gaps? (treatments for the new plans)

In this presentation we propose to outline the approach to risk based fire management planning outlined above, incorporating external evaluation results and examine how this information is being used to inform the next phase of the fire management planning process.