Assessing bushfire hazards

To identify and assess the bushfire hazards at your property, complete our Hazard identification tutorial followed by our Hazard and BAL assessments (see the links below). The information gained from these tutorials may be required for parts of your building and planning proposal and will nonetheless aid in siting your new structure, while highlighting the bushfire risks that should be mitigated during your building’s design, construction, or retrofit.

The risk that a bushfire presents to a building is a combination of the building’s vulnerability (weak points in its design, construction and maintenance) and the severity of the bushfire hazards during the fire. The term vulnerability refers to the extent to which a community, building, service or location is likely to be damaged or disrupted by the impacts of a bushfire. Whereas the severity of a bushfire hazard is based on a combination of the local terrain, climate, weather and vegetation, as well as the presence of any additional bushfire fuels, such as cars, sheds, and other buildings (see Bushfire basics).

A poorly designed or poorly maintained house (and anyone inside the house) is more vulnerable to bushfire than a well-designed and well-maintained house. In order to mitigate the risks of a bushfire, the precise characteristics of the hazards at your location need to be determined and your property’s vulnerability needs to be reduced.