Tuesday 11 June 2013

Knowledge for Wildfire

I am pleased to be on the Steering Group of the NERC funded Knowledge for Wildfire (KfWf) project, which is getting into its stride.  It is a successor to the FIRES Seminar series that took place 2008 - 2009, and in general this project aims to assist the management of wildfire risk in the UK at all stages from prevention to response and recovery, and more specifically to:

Join up emerging cross-sector, cross-disciplinary interests in wildfire;
Apply and adapt NERC's fire-related research to improve the evidence base for managing wildfire risk; and
Facilitate new partnership research and knowledge exchange projects to fill knowledge gaps.

To provide context there are some interesting satellite images of April's conflagration in NW Scotland, and this provides a demonstration of the information sources that are available.  We need to develop our use of this information so that it can be used in real time, rather than just when we are at the 'lessons learned' stage after another bout of wildfires.  This project will help.

This is a UK project and I will be keen that the project feeds into the Scottish Wildfire Forum.  I have been asked to attend a meeting with the Scottish Fire & Rescue Service in advance of organising a meeting that I hope will wake the Forum from its current dormancy.

I am attending a Steering Group meeting for the KfWf project this week and this will be followed by a meeting to discuss fire intensity and the implications for managing wild and prescribed fire.