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New bushfire prediction technology developed at The University of Western Australia is being tested this summer with live trials using a fire authority helicopter.

The Aurora computer simulation system uses satellite information added to new software to remotely sense and predict fire behaviour.

Professor George Milne, from UWA's School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, says it offers much greater speed at mapping future fire movement and is very simple to use.

"It can be used during a bushfire emergency to predict fire movement, doing in 30 seconds what now takes an hour manually and it doesn't require you to be a skilled fire behaviour analyst to be able to predict where the fire's going to be," he said.

The technology is being developed to provide families, communities, organisations and emergency service agencies in rural, regional and remote areas with bushfire alerts (via SMS and email), access to bushfire prediction maps, fire-fighting technique testing and a bushfire planning tool which may be used to plan prescribed burning strategies.

The three-year $5.6 million project between UWA, Landgate and the Fire and Emergency Services Authority, has been supported by the Australian Government Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Digital Regions Initiative.

It will be trialled live this bushfire season with Professor Milne's team accessing data from a FESA helicopter to providing accurate fire location information which will be input to the simulation technology.

"FESA will not be using our results at all but we will be checking how accurate they are as the fire develops," Professor Milne said.

Professor Milne's evidence-based fire-spread computer model of extreme, fast-spreading fires will eventually be incorporated into a fire-location forecasting system that will give agencies early warning and predicted location of bushfires.

Media references

Winthrop Professor George Milne (+61 8)  6488 2717  /  (+61 4) 17 820 768
Michael Sinclair-Jones (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 3229  /  (+61 4) 00 700 783