Now, more than ever, fire and land management agencies rely on new knowledge, information and tools to make critical decisions when faced with increasingly frequent and severe natural hazards. At the forefront of this are PhD graduates, driving decision making with their expertise, posing the difficult questions and forming the solutions.
The natural hazards postgraduate program, which began with the Bushfire CRC in 2003, continued with the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC in 2013 and is now in train at Natural Hazards Research Australia (the Centre). The program has greatly contributed to the current research and utilisation capability of the emergency management and resilience sector. This further capability was a central pillar of the Bushfire CRC, as in the early 2000s Australia’s emergency management research sector was ageing and the next wave of critical thinkers was needed. The Bushfire CRC supported 80 PhDs during its lifetime, while the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC took this even further, supporting a total of 150 postgraduates, many with international recognition.
These former CRC students are providing lasting research capability for the industry, with many now filling senior roles in fire and land management agencies, as well as in academia. At industry conferences this year, the Natural Hazards Research Forum and AFAC22, many former PhD students involved with the CRCs were present, engaging with the latest natural hazards science and sharing what they have been up to since leaving the program. Below is just a snapshot of a few former CRC students and the industry-wide impact they have created since completing their research.
Bushfire CRC alumni
Dr Claire Cooper, Emergency Services Telecommunications Agency
Dr Claire Cooper is now the Director Policy and Planning at the Emergency Services Telecommunications Agency and an experienced manager of complex multi-agency programs, projects and initiatives in the emergency management industry and public sector.
Since completion of her CRC PhD in 2011 with La Trobe University, Dr Cooper worked at the Country Fire Authority as an Operational Doctrine Adviser, looking at to build human factors into training and writing procedures and policies. She then moved to Emergency Management Victoria, working in a director role on multi-agency projects and state-based reform initiatives.
Dr Cooper’s PhD research looked at the human factors in firefighter decision making and developed a greater understanding of how worst cases can improve decision making by bush firefighters. By developing training recommendations for fire agencies that are tailored to complement existing structures, this research has greatly improved safety in decision making.
“One of the incredible benefits from my connection to the Bushfire CRC was having links across Victoria, but also nationally. It was great having that connection to end-users and fire agencies, and access to people at things like the AFAC conferences and other research events. It gave me a much better understanding of what’s going on across different jurisdictions and as most of the work I do is multi-agency complex projects, having those skills on how to bring people together and knowing who to tap into has been really important and a key part of what I learnt through the CRC,” Dr Cooper said.
Dr Danielle Wright, Country Fire Authority
Before the completion of her CRC PhD with RMIT University in 2009, Dr Danielle Wright had already developed a satellite model to assess grassland curing and feed into agency readiness and fire behaviour modelling and calculations, which was adopted operationally by the NSW Rural Fire Service. She was then offered a position with the Country Fire Authority, where she has worked for more than 10 years as a Remote Sensing Analyst in the Research and Development team. In this role, she was the lead end-user of two Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC projects – Fire surveillance and hazard mapping and Creation of a grassland curing dataset.
Dr Wright’s main area of work at CFA has been the development of the MapVictoria satellite curing model and the Victorian Improved Satellite Curing Algorithm, which have been used operationally by agencies in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory, South Australia and Tasmania, and have fed into the Australian Fire Danger Rating System for curing assessment.
“It has been a journey for grassland curing development, but I would never have gotten to where I am now without the Bushfire CRC. In the last few months, I have been contacted by New Zealand as they now want to adopt my approach and test my satellite curing model. I’m very grateful for the CRC to have had this opportunity. Before I started my PhD, I didn’t know anything about curing or satellite remote sensing; it has become my expertise and I’m very happy with where I am,” said Dr Wright.
Dr Felipe Aires, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service
Dr Felipe Aires is a Fire Science Interpretation Officer with the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, through which he served as the lead end-user on three research projects with the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC – Mapping bushfire hazard and impacts, Optimisation of fuel reduction burning regimes and From hectares to tailor made solutions for risk mitigation. Here, Dr Aires helped guide researchers on the needs of practitioners and work with fire and land management agencies to embed research findings into practice.
Dr Aires’ PhD investigated the leaf traits and combustion features of invasive woody plants in forests of eastern Australia, focusing particularly on olives. After completing his CRC PhD in wildland firefighting and investigation with the University of Sydney in 2014, Dr Aires continued at the university as an academic tutor and then a teaching and research assistant, collecting, processing and analysing soil and vegetation samples. His research is helping decision makers take the right course of action when fighting fires in invaded areas.
Dr Rowena Morris, NSW Department of Planning and Environment
Dr Rowena Morris is a Senior Project Officer in Applied Bushfire Science with the NSW Department of Planning and Environment (DPE). Previously, Dr Morris worked as an Illawarra ranger with the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and then became an advisory member on the Services’ South Coast Regional Advisory Committee. After lecturing at the Australian Catholic University, Dr Morris worked as a Senior Honorary Fellow at the University of Wollongong before serving as a NSW DPE Ranger in the Five Islands.
Through her CRC PhD, completed in 2013 at the University of Adelaide, Dr Morris looked at the effect of prescribed burning on sediment movement in the Mount Lofty Ranges, and assessed and applied existing erosion models to identify areas of high erosion potential following fire. Through this research, a network of erosion pins and sediment plots was installed to monitor sediment movement both before, after, within and adjoining proposed prescribed burns.
Dr Andrew Edwards, Charles Darwin University
Dr Andrew Edwards has been involved in vegetation sampling, burnt area mapping, data collation and analysis of a long-term monitoring program in three of the large national parks in northern Australia, including the World Heritage Listed Kakadu National Park. Dr Edwards’ development of a regional geographic information system, including high resolution fire history and habitat mapping over the 28,000 km2 West Arnhem Land region, was a part of the development of the Savanna Burning methodology for greenhouse gas emissions abatement accepted by the Australian Government's Carbon Farming Initiative. His research continues to improve savanna health and carbon abatement programs.
Through his CRC research, spanning both the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC and Bushfire CRC, Dr Edwards helped to develop the Savanna Monitoring and Evaluation Reporting Framework. The Framework provides fire and land management agencies with the ability to monitor their fire management and evaluate its effects, providing a single point to assess and compare the outcomes of fire management across 70 per cent of the continent. Displayed on the Northern Australia Fire Information website, the information is being used for fire management operations, planning and suppression, and is analysed to describe past and present fire regimes.
Dr Edwards graduated with a CRC PhD from Charles Darwin University in 2009 where he developed an algorithm for the satellite remote sensing of the level of fire effect on fire-prone tropical savanna vegetation. This fire severity mapping has become part of the Darwin Centre for Bushfire Research’s North Australia Fire Information website, providing land managers of the nearly 2 million km2 of tropical savanna landscape in north Australia with additional information to better manage fire in the region and annual mapping of fire severity for inclusion in future versions of savanna burning methodologies.
Dr Peter Hayes, CQUniversity, RMIT University, University of Melbourne
Dr Peter Hayes, an expert in teamwork and decision making, is lecturing and researching at three universities. Peter holds sessional lecturer positions at both RMIT University and the University of Melbourne, in addition to his role as a Research Fellow at CQUniversity. It is through this CQUniversity position that he co-led the Improving decision making in complex multi-team environments Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC project.
This project developed simple practical tools that can help people better manage their teamwork, improve their decision making and develop more creative solutions. In addition, the project considered how organisations utilise the outcomes of research and developed a guide to help agencies utilise research more effectively. A guide to non-technical skills in emergency management is a first of its kind guide to help practitioners deepen their understanding and use of non-technical skills. It introduces and highlights the importance of non-technical skills, identifies some of the issues that can occur from inadequate non-technical skills, and describes tools that can help better manage non-technical skills in operational situations.
Dr Hayes’ PhD research investigated decision making in Incident Management Teams and explored the differences in the decision making quality between pre-formed teams and the teams pulled together at short notice. Following his PhD, Dr Hayes’ was part of a Bushfire CRC research team that interviewed bushfire-affected residents around Yass, Shoalhaven and Coonabarabran in NSW at the request of the NSW Rural Fire Service.
Following the completion of his CRC PhD in 2012 with La Trobe University, Dr Hayes joined the Kaplan Business School, overseeing the development and delivery of undergraduate and postgraduate business statistics and business information systems subjects as the Academic Head of Quantitative Analysis, Methods and Business Information Systems.
Dr Marco de Sisto, RMIT University
Dr Marco de Sisto is a Senior Lecturer of Human Resource Management and the Industry Engagement Coordinator at RMIT University’s School of Management. In his role he has developed a national grid for the evaluation of bushfire educational and informational messages.
Dr de Sisto focused his PhD research, which he completed in 2017, on how fire and land management agencies in Australia and Italy collaborated on intelligence from bushfire investigations. The findings of his research have provided fire and land management agencies with a better understanding of knowledge sharing.
Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC alumni
Dr Korah Parackal, James Cook University
Dr Korah Parackal is a post-doc Research Fellow at the James Cook University’s Cyclone Testing Station. During his time at the Station, Dr Parackal has been involved with wind tunnel testing, strength testing of building products, collecting wind speed data during cyclones and post-event damage investigations. He is also a researcher on the Centre’s new Streamlining SWIRLnet data acquisition, analysis, storage and dissemination procedures project.
After completing his CRC PhD in structural engineering in 2018, Dr Parackal joined the Improving the resilience of existing housing to severe wind events CRC project and led the development of a new website called Weather the Storm to inform buildings and homeowners about how to improve an existing home’s key structural connections against extreme wind. The website is packed with helpful information about how to improve the strength and safety of a house, guiding users through three levels of protection: general maintenance, window and door protection, and roof tie-down retrofitting (offering the most protection).
Dr Parackal’s PhD examined the dangers of losing fasteners on the roof of a home during a cyclone by using a wind tunnel to test the connections and surveying past cyclone damage to finally create a model that demonstrates progressive and cascading failures within a simulation. The outcomes of his PhD have allowed for the design and construction of more resilient structural systems and techniques for retrofitting existing structures.
Dr Kamarah Pooley, Fire and Rescue NSW
Fire Research Officer Dr Kamarah Pooley has been with Fire and Rescue NSW since 2012, turning out to fires as a Senior Firefighter, working in the Community Engagement Unit and now in the Fire Investigation and Research Unit.
Most recently, Dr Pooley took out the inaugural 2022 Disaster Challenge Final, with her colleague Mark Owens from the Country Fire Authority, with their innovative idea to use wi-fi to provide tourists with local disaster preparedness information while on holiday.
Dr Pooley completed her PhD in 2018 with the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and conducted an evaluation of Youth Justice Conferencing convened for youth misuse of fire in New South Wales. She was awarded an Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award for her research in 2018 and received the Australian Fire Service Medal as part of the Queen’s Birthday 2022 Honours List as recognition of her contributions to prevention programs and community fire safety.
Since then, Dr Pooley has worked as a research assistant with the School of Justice at QUT, a senior research analyst with the Australian Institute of Criminology and a freelance research consultant for the Department of Fire and Emergency Services.
"I feel very fortunate to have been supported by the CRC during my PhD candidature. I attended and presented at research forums and conferences around Australia, met some incredible people, accessed some very useful contacts, and made lifelong friends,” Dr Pooley said.
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In a world where natural hazards continue to increase in frequency and severity, it is more important than ever to provide decision makers with the skills and capabilities they need to make critical decisions to keep our communities safe. The CRC’s postgraduate research program is one important piece in providing that capacity, and as the varied experiences and achievements of just a selection of the two CRCs’ combined student cohort shows, postgraduate and early career researchers are valued within government, academia and the emergency service agencies for their skills in applying critical thinking to the problems Australia faces with natural hazards.
Natural Hazards Research Australia’s education program is on track to continue supporting the future research capability of the emergency management sector, with 20 students already on board as either a scholar, early career research fellow or associate student. This number is rapidly increasing as more PhD and Masters’ students are applying for the opportunity to engage with industry leaders and gain an understanding of the emergency management sector, its opportunities and challenges.
