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Program

WORKSHOPS & SEMINAR | Monday 6 June 2022

WORKSHOP 1

WORKSHOP 2

SEMINAR 1

12:00 - 16:00

10:00 - 15:00

10:00 - 16:00

Red Sunday - 8 January 2040

Changing Climate, Changing Practices: The role of sector and community partnerships in managing bushfire risk

So close to the new beginning - Implementing the Australian Fire Danger Rating System (AFDRS)

Workshop hosted by: Bureau of Meteorology

 

Workshop hosted by: Department of Environment, Land, Water & Planning

Seminar hosted by: AFAC and NSW Rural Fire Service

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DAY 1 | Tuesday 7 June 2022

7:30 - 18:30

9:15 - 9:45

9:45 - 10:30

10:30 - 10:55

10:55 - 11:40

11:40 - 12:10 [REMOTE]

12:20 - 13:15

13:20 - 13:40

13:40 - 14:00

14:00 - 14:20

14:20 - 14:40

14:40 - 15:05

15:10 - 15:30

15:30 - 15:50

15:50 - 16:10

16:10 - 16:30

16:30 - 16:35

16:40 - 17:25

17:25 - 18:10

18:15 - 20:15

Conference registration & information desk open

PLENARY

Room: Grand Ballroom 3 & 4

Welcome to Country | Opening ceremony - President of IAWF

KEYNOTE 1: The latest science of our changing climate 

Dr Sophie Lewis, ACT Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment

Session sponsored by:

MORNING TEA

KEYNOTE 2: Climate and fire – learnings from the political interface

Greg Mullins, Climate Councillor, fmr Commissioner of Fire & Rescue NSW

KEYNOTE 3: A NASA perspective: Global to local connections between fire, weather, and climate 

Dr Amber Soja, Research Fellow, National Institute of Aerospace

Session sponsored by:

LUNCH

STREAM 1

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STREAM 3

Room: Grand Ballroom 3 & 4

Room: Grand Ballroom 1 & 2

Room: Grand Ballroom 5

Climate change and fire

Understanding and engaging communities

Readiness and response

Spreading like Wildfire – the rising threat of extraordinary landscape fires: a United Nations environment program rapid response assessment

Andrew Sullivan, CSIRO

Learning alongside community: a contemporary approach to post-fire engagement

Peta M O’Donohue, SA Country Fire Service; Fiona L Dunstan, Bureau of Meteorology

Moneyball for Fire: analytics in Wildfire response

Nick McCarthy, Country Fire Authority

Global increases in forest fire risk under climate change based on daily fire-atmospheric
water demand relationships

Hamish Clarke, NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub

Using Behavioural Insights methods to encourage community behaviour change

Jodi Braszell, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning; Bernice Plant, Monash University

Theorizing mutual aid in Wildland Fire: benefits, challenges, and emerging pressures

Eric B Kennedy, York University, Canada

Review of the climate mechanisms behind the occurrence of extreme wildfire events
around the globe

Lluís Brotons, Ecoland lab, CSIC-CREAF, Spain

Engaging with children today will bring solutions for tomorrow

Tony Jarrett, Central Queensland University

Forest Operation Restrictions: reducing the likelihood of industry caused bushfire
ignitions

Ruth Ryan, HVP Plantations

Fire behaviour during heatwaves and implications in a changing climate

Mika Peace, Bureau of Meteorology

“I never cared about the trees before”: Empowering landholders to undertake
sustainable fire management in the aftermath of Australia’s Black Summer

Hannah Etchells, Nature Conservation Council NSW

Developing a suppression effectiveness model to calculate the likelihood of bushfire
containment

Tim Gazzard, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning

AFTERNOON TEA

Climate change and policy in fire management

Understanding and engaging communities

Ignitions and response

Turning fire management policy into practice

Kevin G Tolhurst, University of Melbourne

An ecologist, a bushfire risk planner and a firefighter walked into a bar. Here’s what happened next… Balancing risk and connections to place in fire adapted landscapes: Reflecting on fire ecology engagement approaches

Samantha J Strong, Safer Togther; Jennie Cramp, NSW Rural Fire Service

Exploring the influence of drought and weather on fire incidents and suppression
responses across Victoria, Australia

Matt Plucinski, CSIRO

The role of science in the bushfire-inquiry cycle: a case study from the 2019/20 fire
season

Ross Bradstock, NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub

Strange beauty: Bushfire impacts on people’s experiences of forest landscapes

Rebecca M Ford, University of Melbourne

Spatial patterns in unplanned ignitions in the Australian Capital Territory and their implications for fire management

Nicholas Wilson, Australian National University

What do we already know about improving bushfire laws and policies? Lessons for climate‑adaptive law reform in Australia

Phillipa C McCormack, University of Adelaide

Wildfire Risk Reduction in Portugal: What is the contribution of Community Wildfire Protection Plans?

Fantina Tedim, University of Porto, Portugal

An operational lightning ignition model for early fire detection

Stephen Deutsch, Forest Fire Management Victoria

The California Fire Science Consortium: A decade of fire science exchange

Stacey Frederick, UC Berkeley, USA

Evacuation Behaviour in Peri-urban Fires: A case study of the 2019 Kincade fire in
California, USA

Erica D Kuligowski, RMIT University

Development of a Model of Response for forest firefighting in northeast Victoria

Shaun Lawlor, Forest Fire Management Victoria

BREAK - DELEGATES TO RE-GROUP IN PLENARY

PLENARY

Room: Grand Ballroom 3 & 4

KEYNOTE 4: Vicki Woodburn, Group Executive, Australian Climate Service/Bureau of Meteorology

KEYNOTE 5: A national perspective: managing consequences in complex emergencies

Joe Buffone, Director-General, Emergency Management Australia

Session sponsored by:

WELCOME RECEPTION, POSTER SESSION & EXHIBITION

Sponsored by:

DAY 2 | Wednesday 8 June 2022

7:30 - 17:30

9:00 - 9:20 [REMOTE]

9:20 - 9:40

9:40 - 10:00

10:00 - 10:45

10:45 - 11:10

11:15 - 11:35

11:35 - 11:55

11:55 - 12:15

12:15 - 12:35

12:35 - 13:30

13:55 - 14:15

14:15 - 14:35

14:35 - 14:55

14:55 - 15:15

15:15 - 15:40

15:45 - 16:05

16:05 - 16:25

16:25 - 16:45

16:50 - 17:00

17:00 - 17:50

18:00

19:00 - 22:30

Conference registration & information desk open

PLENARY

Room: Grand Ballroom 3 & 4

KEYNOTE 6: Erasing the Ancestors: Indigenous Fire in the Boreal

Amy Christianson, Indigenous Fire Specialist, Parks Canada

KEYNOTE 7: Neglect of Country and the rise of catastrophic bushfires in southeast Australia

Assoc. Prof Michael-Shawn Fletcher, University of Melbourne

KEYNOTE 8: Cultural land management in southeastern Australia – Black Summer final report

Oliver Costello, Firesticks and Jagun Alliance Aboriginal Corporation

PANEL 1: Working together – Dr Timothy Neale (Facilitator)

Amy Christianson, Parks Canada | A/Prof Michael-Shawn Fletcher, University of Melbourne | Oliver Costello, Firesticks and Jagun Alliance Aboriginal Corporation

MORNING TEA

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STREAM 2

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Room: Grand Ballroom 3 & 4

Room: Grand Ballroom 1 & 2

Room: Grand Ballroom 5

Cultural burning and the 2019/20 fires

Bushfire risk planning

Fire spread and behaviour prediction

Disruption of cultural burning lead to unprecedented wildfires in southeast Australia

Michela Mariani, University of Nottingham, UK

Bush Fire Risk Management Planning: the balance between science and experience

Melissa O’Halloran & Susannah Bilous, NSW Rural Fire Service

A fast, physically based model for predicting long-range firebrand transport in bushfire
plumes

Jeffrey D Kepert, Bureau of Meteorology

Westernised Land Management meets Aboriginal Land Management through incorporating cultural burns

Jacob Keed, Transport Canberra and City Services

Upper Beaconsfield & surrounds: A Community led values-based bushfire risk
mitigation project

Michael Jones, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning

A systematic quantitative approach to assessing probabilistic fire spread predictive skill and value of information

Ben Twomey, RedEye

The 2019-20 Australian forest fires are a harbringer of decreased prescribed burning effectiveness under rising extreme conditions

Hamish Clarke, NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub

Toowoomba region bushfire risk analysis: translating risk into land use planning
practice

Laura Gannon, Meridian Urban

A Bayesian probabilistic approach to bushfire rate of spread modelling using line scan data

Michael Storey, University of Wollongong

NSW RFS Fire Behaviour Analysis Unit – adapting to the challenge during the 2019-20 season: lessons learnt and future adaptations

Laurence McCoy, NSW Rural Fire Service

Norfolk Island opportunity for Australasian best-practice bushfire risk management

Rod L Rose, Eco Logical Australia

Simple fuel-moisture functions for empirical fire-spread models

Kevin Tory, Bureau of Meteorology

LUNCH

Lightning Talks

Lightning Talks

Lightning Talks

13:35 - 13:40

Effects of climate change on resilience of fire prone eucalypt communities

Harriet M Simpson-Southward, University of Wollongong

13:40 - 13:45

Predicting biodiversity risk under changing climate and fire regimes

Sarah McColl-Gausden, University of Melbourne

13:45 - 13:50

Megafire-induced interval squeeze threatens vegetation at landscape scales

Tom Le Breton, University of NSW

13:35 - 13:40

Physical modelling for mapping firebrand and heat flux on structures in the wildlandurban
interface (WUI)

Amila Wickramasinghe, Victoria University

13:40 - 13:45

House Loss Probability Model: A Surf Coast case study examining building, street and township vulnerability

William Swedosh, CSIRO

13:45 - 13:50

The ideal defensible space: Findings about Portuguese building resilience

Fantina Tedim, University of Porto, Portugal

13:35 - 13:40

An index for describing the spatial-connectivity of flammable landscapes

Douglas AG Radford, University of Adelaide

13:40 - 13:45

A case study of the Green Valley/Talmalmo (NSW)-Corryong (VIC) fire (30-31 Dec 2019)

Dragana Zovko-Rajak, Bureau of Meteorology

13:45 - 13:50

Assessing soil moisture impacts on surface fuel moisture

Marta Yebra, Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre

Fire spread and behaviour prediction

Vegetation dryness

Fuel management impacts and implications

Foreseeing the forecasters: the future development and use of predictive services in Australia

Timothy Neale, Deakin University

Predicting the flammability-switch in wet eucalypt forests

Jane Cawson, University of Melbourne

The culture of sacrificial areas: blackout burning increases long-term fire risk adjacent communities

Diana Virkki, Healthy Land and Water

Communicating the art and science of fire spread prediction

Andrew Sturgess, RedEye 

Does drought severity erode wildfire resilience in wet forests of east Australia?

Christopher E Gordon, Western Sydney University

Forest thinning and planned fire mitigate wildfire severity in Australian Eucalyptus open forests

Chris Weston, University of Melbourne

Spark: Australia’s newest national operational bushfire spread simulator

John Bally, AFAC; James Hilton, Data61

Grassland curling prediction using a national seasonal water outlook

Ashkan Shokri, Bureau of Meteorology

Effects of mechanical mastication on fuel properties and bushfire behaviour in Australian fuel types

Bianca J Pickering, University of Melbourne

The application of heuristics to predicting grassfire rate of spread under elevated fire danger conditions

Miguel G Cruz, CSIRO

A forest fuel dryness forecasting system that integrates an automated fuel sensor network, spatially forecast weather variables, landscape attributes and machine learning models

Christopher S Lyell, University of Melbourne

The dynamics of prescribed burn smoke in NSW eucalypt forests

Owen Price, University of Wollongong

AFTERNOON TEA

Fuels and fire

Synoptic and mesoscale meteorology role in fire

Climate change mitigation and adaptation

Adding fuel to the fire: have fires in southeast Australia always burned so hot?

Anthony Romano, University of Melbourne

Meteorological and climatological aspects of some extreme fire event days in eastern Victoria during Black Summer

Graham A Mills, Monash University

Carbon farming and bushfire risk – are we worsening the risks, and what can we do about it?

Cuong Tran, Market Advisory Group

Manipulating fire regimes in sensitive ecosystems to adapt to climate change

Adam Leavesley, ACT Parks and Conservation Service

Synoptic and mesoscale meteorology affecting fire behaviour in southeast New South Wales

Paul Fox-Hughes, Bureau of Meteorology

Linking climate change science, policy and practice: Lessons from the Victorian Fire Management Sector
Chloe Begg, Country Fire Authority

Pyrodiversity, functional heterogeneity and the role of emerging, climate change derived fire regimes on biodiversity

Lluís Brotons, Ecoland lab, CSIC-CREAF, Spain

Estimating smoke emissions using bottom-up and top-down methods for improved smoke forecasting

Fabienne Reisen, CSIRO

Climate induced change in wildfire extent and severity drives tree mortality and carbon balance in Australian temperate forests

Luba Volkova, University of Melbourne

BREAK - DELEGATES TO RE-GROUP IN PLENARY

PLENARY

Room: Grand Ballroom 3 & 4

KEYNOTE 9: Fire and climate: A safe future or a resilient future?

Dr Sidney Dekker, Griffith University

Session sponsored by:

DAY 2 CLOSE

CONFERENCE DINNER - The CitiPower Centre, Junction Oval, St Kilda

Sponsored by:

DAY 3 | Thursday 9 June 2022

7:30 - 17:30

9:00 - 9:45

9:45 - 10:30

10:30 - 10:55

11:00 - 11:20

11:20 - 11:40

11:40 - 12:00

12:00 - 12:20

12:20 - 13:15

13:40 - 14:00

14:00 -14:20

14:20 - 14:40

14:40 - 15:00

15:00 - 15:25

15:30 - 16:45

16:45 - 17:00

Conference registration & information desk open

PLENARY

Room: Grand Ballroom 3 & 4

KEYNOTE 10: Communicating the complexity of fire and climate science

Stephen Oliver, Manager, Documentaries, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

PANEL 2: Communicating the complexity of fire and climate science – David Bruce, Natural Hazards Research Australia (Facilitator)

Stephen Oliver, ABC | Ailie Gallant, Monash University | Anthony Clark, NSW RFS | Fiona Dunston, BoM

MORNING TEA

STREAM 1

STREAM 2

STREAM 3

Room: Grand Ballroom 3 & 4

Room: Grand Ballroom 1 & 2

Room: Grand Ballroom 5

Bushfire risk mitigation approaches

Seasonal prediction of fire risk

Ecological resilience and impact

Strategic fuel break costs and benefits: a case study from the Barwon South West

Liam Fogarty, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning

Accurately predicting fire season severity from analysis of historic fire climatology

Andy Ackland, Country Fire Authority

The impact of forest fires on long-term streamflow and water yields in Melbourne’s water catchments

Gary J Sheridan, University of Melbourne

Maximising bushfire risk reduction and minimising environmental impact: a novel local government approach using manual fuel reduction

Jeremy Little, Mornington Peninsula Shire

Predicting bushfire risks for Victoria over multiple weather streams using Bayesian Network Analyses

Erica Marshall, University of Melbourne

The effect of fire severity patchiness on post-fire recovery dynamics in eucalypt dominated forests of south-eastern Australia

Ross A Bradstock, University of Wollongong

Risk 2.0: a journey along the Victorian risk-based approach to bushfire management

Estrella Melero-Blanca & Mitchell B Stephen, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning

Thresholds of fire danger: the need to quantitatively link fire risk metrics and fire activity

Thomas J Duff, Country Fire Authority

Development of Ecological Health Performance Scorecard and Fire Metrics for NSW National Parks

Peta Norris & Ross Peacock, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service

The fuel management suitability tool – A new way to select the most suitable fire management strategies to reduce wildfire risk

Amelie Jeanneau, University of Adelaide

Progress towards a new National Seasonal Fire Outlook

Paul Gregory, Bureau of Meteorology

Prioritisation tools for post-fire restoration in Mediterranean-type ecosystems in California

Hugh Safford, Vibrant Planet, USA

LUNCH

Lightning Talks

Lightning Talks

Lightning Talks

13:20 - 13:25

Quantifying litter bed ignitability in temperate eucalypt forests

Jamie E Burton, University of Melbourne

13:25 - 13:30

The effects of bushfire disturbances on estuaries

Thayanne L Barros, University of NSW

13:30 - 13:35

Land and fire management strategy mitigation of excessive fuel load following and extreme weather event

Sharon Merritt & Brian Earl, Country Fire Authority

13:20 - 13:25

Securing water supplies in remote areas for fire-fighting in north-east Victoria

David Ross, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning

13:25 - 13:30

Rapid inspection of lightning strike ignitions utilising unmanned aerial vehicles with swarming behaviour

Marta Yebra, Australian National University

13:30 - 13:35

Quantifying pump and roll: Leveraging radio-based automatic vehicle location for analysing fire agency tanker production rates

Kristy A Butler & Nick F McCarthy, Country Fire Authority

13:20 - 13:25

Influence of wind and fire interactions on near-bed flame pulsations and flame spread through a vegetative fuel bed

Abhinandan Singh, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

13:25 - 13:30

Seasonal drivers of extreme fire weather in Australia

Rachel Taylor, Australian National University

13:30 - 13:35

Risk 2.0 – fire size prioritisation: developing a tool to support fuel management in landscape management zones

Sarah Loveday, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning

Future of fires and management

Fire-atmosphere interactions

Fauna and fire

Future fire regimes – the knowns, the hurdles and the unknowns

Trent D Penman, University of Melbourne

Fire-generated tornadic vortices during the Australian 2019/20 bushfire season

Mika Peace, Bureau of Meteorology

Exploring inter-relations between fire, habitat, and mammals in a fragmented South Australian heathy woodland

Simeon Zylinski, University of Melbourne

Shifts in bushfire dynamics and impacts, how can we face them?

Marta Yebra, Australian National University

The roles of vortices in fire environments

Bryan Quaife, Florida State University, USA

A summary of bird responses to fire in central Victoria’s heathy-dry forests, in terms of time-since-fire, fire frequency and the severity of prescribed burns

Diana Kuchinke, Federation University

Wildfire Futures: examining fire management trends, challenges and mitigation options in southern Australia under changing climates

Thomas A Fairman, University of Melbourne

Predicting blow-up fire events: lessons from Black Summer

Rick McRae, University of NSW

Matchstick turns planned burning on its head

Dale Tonkinson, Country Fire Authority

Climate change significantly alters future wildfire mitigation opportunities in south-eastern Australia

Giovanni Di Virgilio, NSW Department of Planning and Environment

Development of a dynamic mapping tool for regions prone to vorticity-driven lateral spread

Rachel L Badlan, University of NSW

Similar fire history does not equate to similar fauna habitat in structurally similar vegetation

Jane S Williamson, NSW Department of Planning and Environment

AFTERNOON TEA

PLENARY

Room: Grand Ballroom 3 & 4

PANEL 3: Fire leaders – Rob Webb, AFAC (Facilitator)

Naomi Stephens, NSW NPWS | Murray Carter, DFES | Chris Hardman, FFMV | Ruth Ryan, HVP | Fiona Gill, DEW | Rob Rogers, NSW RFS

Closing ceremony

FIELD TRIPS | Friday 10 June 2022

FIELD TRIP 1

FIELD TRIP 2

7:30 - 16:00

7:30 - 16:00

Strategic Fuel Breaks in High Bushfire Risk Landscapes - pulling the right levers to ensure resilient communities

Forest fire research: management effects and fire dynamics

Field trip sponsored and hosted by: DELWP

Field trip hosted by: The University of Melbourne

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FAQs

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If you have proceeded to register and then changed your mind, please contact the Conference Secretariat within 24 hours of registering to avoid any cancellations fees.

Registration cancellations received 30 days prior to the event will be refunded, minus a $120 cancellation fee. Cancellations received less than 30 days prior to the event will not be eligible for a refund. Substitute delegates may be nominated at any time.

Refunds for registration add-ons (workshops, dinners etc) will be given at the discretion of the Conference Secretariat.

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Venue 

Pullman & Mecure Melbourne Albert Park is certified with the #ALLSAFE label. For more information as to what this entails and what safety measures are in place, click here to visit their website. 

Vaccinations

The Conference Secretariat has the right to refuse entry if you are unable to produce proof of vaccination status or relevant exemption. Refusal of entry is not eligibility for a refund.

Cancelled event

In the event that the conference is unable to proceed as scheduled due to government imposed restrictions, the Conference Secretariat will be in touch. Delegates will be offered a full refund.

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The Conference Secretariat has the right to refuse entry if you are unable to produce proof of vaccination status or relevant exemption. Refusal of entry is not eligibility for a refund.