Bushfire Data Access and Impact Modelling Platform

The Challenge

Bushfire-related datasets are spread across many diverse disciplines, including fire history, fuel, health, air quality, ecosystem, biodiversity and built infrastructure. For researchers, it is beneficial to be able to access these datasets in one secure platform, together with a suite of analytic and visualisation tools to perform a variety of simulations and analyses.

The Approach

This project has built a Bushfire Data Commons (BDC) on other ARDC Bushfire Data Challenges projects. The BDC incorporates or facilitates access to datasets created through the projects.

A range of other external datasets and tools have been also incorporated into the platform. These cover data at fine-grained disaggregated levels, including:

• population data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics
• weather data from the Bureau of Meteorology
• pollution and air quality data from the State-based Environmental Protection Agencies
• health data from organisations, such as the lung cancer registry and related pulmonary diseases data
• road network data from organisations, such as Public Sector Mapping Agency and Open Street Map
• the location of houses in at-risk areas from organisations such as Australian Property Monitors
• biodiversity and habitat distribution maps from organisations such as the Victoria DELWP in states and territories.

Who Will Benefit

Researchers, government, members of the public will find and access data resources related to bushfires through a combined portal.

The Partner

• University of Melbourne

Further Resource

• Learn more about the BDC from a presentation by Richard Sinott (DC013) at the Bushfire Data Challenges Forum in November 2023.