Research underway and international collaborations

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote; we have had a really successful conference in Darwin, where many researchers and students got to meet each other. It was a great location and a wonderful atmosphere. I hope everyone enjoyed it.

With all the major agreements now all signed and adorning bookshelves the serious business of getting the research program going is underway. Many of the projects have now started and are actively developing their research plans and employing research fellows. It is also very heartening to see the new students getting going as well.

We recently held the Research Advisory Forum at the University of South Australia, in Adelaide. This saw about half of the research projects present to the Bushfire CRC partners enabling a better understanding of where the projects are heading. The projects have certainly moved on a long way since the last meeting earlier in the year. Also a number of research presentations were given at the Stakeholder Council meeting held in early November in Sydney, and were well received.

I recently attended the 6th International Confernece on Forest Fire Research in Coimbra, Portugal. The conference is held every four years and organised by Prof. Domingos Viegas, a close collaborator of the Bushfire CRC. I presented the opening Keynote at the conference, and a number of presentations were also given on Bushfire CRC work. Of particular note were presentations by David Nichols, Kevin Tolhurst, Miguel Cruz, Joel Kelso and Nicholas Gellie; all associated with the Bushfire CRC in some way. The conference was most interesting because there was a very strong focus on fire behaviour and very little on fire effects. There were a lot of presentations examining the use of physical-based models such as FIRETEC and WFDS to better understand fire behaviour. See here for more details http://www.adai.pt/icffr/2010/

An interesting point of discussion both from the Europeans and the US researchers was the difficulty in getting funds for fire research; this is particularly acute in places affected by the global financial crisis. However it was recognised that the research community is limited worldwide and the need for collaborative research was critical and much discussion was held examining how this could be achieved. Watch this space for further updates on this.

Any questions? Drop me a line.