National Bushfire Intelligence Capability (NBIC) Stage 1 Collection

Brief description

The National Bushfire Intelligence Capability (NBIC) is providing national awareness for bushfire hazard and risk. It recognises that disaster risk reduction requires an informed shared understanding of bushfire hazard and risk across the disaster Prevent-Prepare-Response-Recovery (PPRR) continuum. The NBIC approach is unique in that it was conceived and is being implemented as an integrated socio-technical system to ensure that data design and relevance is optimised and to support longer-term climate adaptation decision making.

NBIC Stage 1 achieved the generation of bushfire behaviour maps that consider future climate over a range of timescales using the best available and readily accessible data. This data collection comprises a set of demonstration outputs that show bushfire hazard severity potential and various layers that are used to calculate it. These include draft input mapping rasters for slope and fire weather potential (baseline and projected).

The NBIC workflow uses a powerful cloud-based digital platform to enable the rapid co-development, testing and delivery of national extent products. NBIC Stage 2 will build on this work to produce more refined outputs of bushfire hazard, incorporating ongoing advances in data and science to support medium- to long-term decision support needs.

Further information about NBIC is available at https://research.csiro.au/nbic/
Lineage: Bushfire behaviour, such as its intensity and how quickly it moves, depends on three factors: vegetation, weather, and terrain. NBIC Stage 1 vegetation classification is represented by the Australian Fire Danger Rating System (AFDRS) National Fuel Map and parameter table. Weather is defined by both a historical weather reanalysis dataset (ERA5, baseline scenario) drawing on hourly concurrent data and a climate biased future weather dataset (based on 6 Global Climate Models and 2 Representative Concentrations Pathways from CMIP5, projected scenarios). Terrain is represented by Geoscience Australia’s Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) Smoothed Digital Elevation Model (DEM-S). These are ingested into 8 select fire behaviour models in alignment with the Australian Fire Danger Rating System (AFDRS).

A suite of modelled data was produced, accounting for climate projections and relevant return time intervals (a prediction of future extremes), representing fire behaviour in the form of fire rate of spread (ROS) and fireline intensity (FLI). Additional data such as the Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) are also produced to socialise all the projected weather scenarios explored and their effect on weather parameters driving fire behaviour. These data are generated for select return time intervals, derived by applying Extreme Value Analysis and an improved method for threshold evaluation.

For further information, refer to the metadata specification sheets in relevant folder for each dataset.

Please note a change to this version of the NBIC Stage 1 collection: The steady state total fuel load raster used in the derivation of fireline intensity and its data specification sheet are no longer publicly accessible. Further enquiries can be directed to [email protected]