As climate change escalates bushfire risks, new tools are needed to better manage this risk. Natural Hazards Research Australia (the Centre) and University of Melbourne researcher, Dr Hamish Clarke has been awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Mid-Career Industry Fellowship in recognition of his research tackling this issue. Hamish aims to help set a global standard for climate-adapted fire management in Australian agencies.
The ARC Industry Fellowship program facilitates academic researchers' transition into industry careers and supports industry-based researchers in working within university settings. It also enhances research collaboration, translation and commercialisation skills.
Hamish’s ARC project on supporting decisions for climate-adapted bushfire risk mitigation was awarded more than $1M in funding through the Fellowship to further work to enhance understanding of current bushfire risk mitigation and bridge the gap between research and practice. Hamish aims to improve tools for fire management agencies to effectively address these risks while taking into consideration the impacts of climate change. The project assesses current fire management tools to understand existing approaches and evaluate their effectiveness under climate change conditions.
Fire management challenges are compounded by a growing list of values threatened by fire, not only life and property but also biodiversity, the environment, community wellbeing, tourism, agriculture, carbon emissions and cultural heritage. Hamish believes in the importance of finding an optimal balance of risk mitigation across diverse natural and human values in a warming world.
“It’s a huge honour getting this Fellowship,” Hamish said. “I’m very grateful for the support of the Centre and Victoria’s peak fire agencies and am really excited about what we can achieve together.”
This ARC research builds on Hamish’s years of bushfire research through the Centre and the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, covering better ways to choose the right prescribed burning strategy for certain outcomes and budgets and his current work on fire simulator development and uptake.
For the ARC Fellowship research Hamish is working with the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action and the Country Fire Authority to advance climate-adapted bushfire risk mitigation. Hamish will be supported by the support of the Centre to identify end-users for a working group to find opportunities to adapt and implement project findings into their work. This co-design process is important to ensure alignment with current fire management and fire modelling strategies. It will encourage collaboration between academia and industry, fostering skill-building and research that is used.