Bushfire Surveyor System
The challenge
Meet CSIRO researcher, Dr. Raphaele Blanchi. Raphaele and her team venture into post-bushfire areas to document both the physical and human impacts of these devastating events.
While bushfires are a natural part of the ecosystem, uncontrolled and intense fires, often referred to as ‘catastrophic fires’, present significant threats and challenges to both human communities and the environment.
The impact on life and property is considerable and will increase with the frequency and severity of these fires.
Our response
The National Bushfire Intelligence Capability (NBIC) is working to understand how and why houses, other infrastructure and the environment become damaged or destroyed in bushfires so that we can help avoid future losses.
How we achieve impact?
We are creating a Bushfire Surveyor System (BSS) application that will enable emergency agencies, researchers and citizens to easily collect and analyse data for bushfire impacted areas.
Bushfire surveys help us understand how houses and the environment are impacted by bushfires.
With this understanding we can better prepare our communities by using data to inform guidelines, community education and policy options.
There are limitations to the bushfire surveying methods that currently exist. For example, during the 2019/20 Black Summer fires, fire agencies were unable to conduct comprehensive surveys for a significant proportion of the affected area due to a lack of resources and capability.
One way to resolve this resource and capability gap is through the development of a consistent national approach for post-bushfire data collection that enables greater inter-agency collaboration and citizen participation. Such an approach is the focus of the Bushfire Surveyor System (BSS).
The BSS app will feature:
- high quality, secure and nationally consistent data
- an intuitive and collaborative user experience
- no enterprise licenses, making it more accessible to more people and agencies
- two parts with tailored features and processes, co-designed with users:
- A comprehensive surveying app for Emergency Agency staff and researchers to customise and conduct surveys on bushfire affected areas. The app supports:
- rapid assessments that provide a quick evaluation of the site and properties affected
- detailed assessments that investigate the attack mechanisms of fires and the vulnerability of the built environment to these attacks.
- A lightweight survey tool for citizens to easily submit information about their own home and property damage.
Who is involved?
Researchers and agency representatives work together to assess house loss after a bushfire.
Researchers and agency representatives work together to assess house loss after a bushfire.
The Bushfire Surveyor System team is working collaboratively with representatives from state government agencies in:
- Western Australia
- South Australia
- Victoria
- New South Wales
- Australian Capital Territory
- Queensland.
These representatives form a Working Group to provide insights into user needs and operating and working environments.
The Working Group has met 6 times and provided insights into product and supply chain optimisation and user needs.
In the coming months the Working Group will provide user tested feedback on pre-release versions of the app to ensure they meet the operating and working environments of users.