Brief description
This dataset was produced under Stream 1 - Work Package 4 of the 2021-23 Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) Bushfire Data Challenge Project; a collaborative partnership between the ARDC, Geoscience Australia, and the Emergency Management Spatial Information Network. The Project’s aim was to bring together a single nationally consistent and harmonised historical bushfire boundary data derived from the authoritative state and territory agencies. Geoscience Australia's role within this project was to; negotiate access to the data, collate and transform the data into the National Standard and then deliver the 'Historical Bushfire Boundaries' data through a static file and a webservice.
More information about the ARDC Project and Work Package 4:
https://ardc.edu.au/program/bushfire-data-challenges/
More information about the Fire History Data Dictionary:
https://www.afac.com.au/insight/doctrine/article/current/fire-history-data-dictionary
The Historical Bushfire Boundaries dataset represents the aggregation of jurisdictional supplied burnt areas polygons stemming from the early 1900's through to 2022 (excluding the Northern Territory). The burnt area data represents curated jurisdictional owned polygons of both bushfires and prescribed (planned) burns. To ensure the dataset adhered to the nationally approved and agreed data dictionary for fire history Geoscience Australia had to modify some of the attributes presented.
The information provided within this dataset is reflective only of data supplied by participating authoritative agencies and may or may not represent all fire history within a state.
Important: The Northern Australia Fire Information (NAFI) data has been intentionally omitted from this dataset (refer to Lineage).
Lineage
Maintenance and Update Frequency: asNeeded
Statement:
This dataset represents an aggregation of each jurisdiction (except the Northern Territory) fire history data up to the end of the 2021-22 bushfire season. Participating agencies included:
- Australian Capital Territory Emergency Services
- New South Wales Rural Fire Service
- Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service
- South Australia Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources
- Tasmania Department of Natural Resources and Environment
- Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning
- Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.
Due to data licensing restrictions and or unavailability of data not all of the jurisdictional historical bushfire data was made available for this project (The Project is aware that sources other than those listed above also create historical bushfire data). This is a known limitation of the dataset and because the maintenance schedule of this dataset in unknown there are no plans undertake revisions with new inclusions.
In the absence of data from the NT consideration was given to using the Northern Australia Fire Information (NAFI) data as an alternate source of historic bushfire data. However, after consultation it was decided by the Steering Committee that the NAFI data was not fit for purpose because it was not supplied by the government agency responsible for authoritative historic bushfire data.
The data provided was placed into a data workflow to map existing attributes into the schema agreed to by the participating state agencies and the Australian Fire and Emergency Services Authorities Council (AFAC):
https://www.afac.com.au/insight/doctrine/article/current/fire-history-data-dictionary.
Notes
Purpose
The creation a of a baseline national fire history dataset aligned to the nationally approved and agreed fire history data dictionary