AN innovative project will take place in the region this summer, as scientists work to better understand fire behaviour and the most efficient way firefighters can respond in an emergency.
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The Country Fire Authority's District 15 has been selected as the location for the Smart Tanker project, which will involve data being collected from Creswick Fire Brigade's tanker during the next few months.
The tanker has been fitted with numerous devices including a number of cameras, flow rate metres and GPS devices, with data to be recorded each time the brigade turns out to respond to a scrub, grass or bushfire.
Creswick was selected due to the fire risk in the area and how active the brigade is in responding to incidents, meaning a significant amount of data is expected to be recorded.
The data will be encrypted and then released to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) for analysis.
The data
Dr Matt Plucinski is a research scientist with the CSIRO, whose previous research has mainly concentrated on bushfire behaviour as well as suppression.
His past research has been been more of a broader look at incidents, so he said it was "really novel" to be able to track one tanker throughout the fire season.
Researchers will collect data about how different variables - including weather, fire fuel and fire behaviour - impact how long it takes firefighters to bring fires under control and how much water they need to use to do so.
"This isn't something that has been done before. It's really important because tankers are such an important part of our fire suppression in Australia," Dr Plucinski said.
Tracking the tanker with GPS, researchers will be able to determine how long the brigade takes to travel from one point to another in the midst of a fire.
"Over a period of time we'll be able to gather enough data to say, well, in very high fire danger conditions, it takes 10 minutes to go that far, but in extreme fire danger conditions it might take 15 minutes," Dr Plucinski said.
GPS data from about 20 other brigade tankers around the Creswick area will also be used in the study, those these tankers will not be fitted with the extra data collection devices.
Previous research has shown that fuel management and prescribed burning impacts how challenging it is to suppress a fire and Dr Plucinski said the data from this project would add to that swathe of research.
While he said there would most likely be a lot of variation in what influences firefighters' ability to fight a fire, he said the notion of acquiring some hard numbers was "really exciting".
The CFA and CSIRO tested their equipment on Tuesday morning, with the Creswick Brigade imitating how they would respond to a long-running grass fire.
At this test, Acting Assistant Chief Fire Officer for District 15, Chris Bigham, said the district was pleased to be able to assist with the research.
"It really validates the existence of our volunteer firefighters and the work that they do in the communities," he said. "Anything we can do to get better and be safer in the future is a good thing."
Anything we can do to get better and be safer in the future is a good thing
An exciting opportunity
Commander Tim Wells said it was a great opportunity for the CFA to be able capture information that it hadn't been able to quantify before.
"We know information through experience but we don't currently have all the numbers to back it up," he said. "So it will be exciting to get some evidence to support what we know has worked when fighting fires and what hasn't."
Using the example of how many trucks to send to a fire, Commander Wells said firefighters' experience indicated that tankers worked most efficiently in groups.
"But we don't have any data to support that or even how much each individual fire truck can put out in certain conditions," Commander Wells said, adding that while CFA firefighters could continue doing what they knew worked, they could discover an easier or more effective method through the research.
He said having having data to illustrate how much water or tankers were needed to fight particular types of fires could help when sending out firefighters to respond too.
"This could really help duty officers when they need to make a decision about where to send resources if there are two serious fires burning at the same time. Each could have a really bad consequence but are you better to split the resources 50-50 or 70-30?
"This could help to provide some guidance in that high-pressure emergency situation, if there is a useful rule of thumb based on data that is ready to go."
It will build a picture so that we can then look across the whole state and figure out how we can improve things
- Nicholas McCarthy
Nicholas McCarthy, a senior research and development officer in the CFA, spends his time looking at how CFA can improve its operations both in the short and long term.
Mr McCarthy said the project was a big priority for the CFA as the data could help the organisation to become much more effective in everything from its planning to responses and resourcing.
It will also help CFA to reconstruct and analyse the response for training purposes, with a new insight into how different fires spread across the landscape, along with how firefighters work to suppress it.
"It will build a picture so that we can then look across the whole state and figure out how we can improve things," he said.
The data acquired will also help shape how CFA invests in equipment too - such as if money is best spent buying a second tanker for a brigade, or whether a water truck with bigger capacity would be more suitable.
While he said there could be some concerns about video cameras on the tanker, he said adding so many elements to the Creswick tanker was an effort to allow the researchers to assess which sensors were most useful going forward, when the pilot is rolled out to collect data from other areas of the state too.