Measuring the effectiveness of bushfire risk reduction: A review of risk frameworks and current practice amongst Victorian fire agencies

Under the concept of 'living with bushfire', it is recognised that fire is part of a natural landscape and that some level of uncontrolled fire is always likely to impact the community. Therefore, a major role of bushfire risk mitigation is to help ensure that in the event of uncontrolled fires, the impacts on community values (i.e., social, economic, and environmental values) are minimised. Understanding how to best minimise impact is extremely challenging given the complexity of the bushfire hazard and its interaction with the things that we value. To objectively balance trade-offs (i.e. the cost and benefit of management intervention), we need approaches to identify and measure the impact on community values using different value attributes (e.g. indices, proxies) and how these may change when exposed to bushfires or management interventions. In this presentation we will outline an approach for developing a set of indices or proxies that will help ensure a holistic approach to bushfire risk management, particularly regarding the monitoring and evaluation of effectiveness. We bring together insights from the scientific literature and current practise in Australian jurisdictions to identify the key challenges and gaps in addressing community values in bushfire risk reduction. The results from the review are used to develop a modelling framework that integrates several risk mitigation activities across agencies to provide an aggregate community risk exposure. The modelling framework can be used to evaluate different activity combinations and potentially be used to identify the combination of activities generation the highest community benefits, supporting a balanced decision making approach in bushfire management.