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| Title | Case Study for the CFA Grassland Curing and Fire Danger Rating Project |
| Publication Type | Report |
| Year of Publication | 2014 |
| Date Published | 17/04/2014 |
| Abstract | Understanding the rate and degree of grassland curing is critical in fire management particularly in assisting fire management agencies in making decisions on bans, warnings, resource allocation, grass fire behaviour models, preparedness planning and prescribed burning operations. The Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) developed a project that would deliver improved, accurate and timely grassland curing information that could be directly integrated into the Victorian fire danger rating system. The Grassland Curing and Fire Danger Rating Project sought to achieve this through using the latest research to develop best practice in collecting, analysing and representing data. Previous research carried out by the Bushfire CRC Program “Improved Methods for the Assessment and Prediction of Grassland Curing” was a central piece of research for this project. The Grassland Curing and Fire Danger Rating Project has resulted in a new and improved curing product by combining field data and satellite data to accurately estimate grassland curing throughout Victoria. This was achieved through increasing the number of volunteer observers to collect data and improving their training, integrating satellite imagery to improve the spatial resolution, developing an automated online system to collect, store and retrieve data and carrying out field trails to assess fire behaviour in grasslands at different curing levels. The CFA now has a system that automatically amalgamates satellite imagery and field observations to calculate the Grassland Fire Danger Index for Victoria. Diagram 1 gives an overview of this system. |
