Constructing on Bushfire-Prone Land

About this course.

Bushfire is a serious risk because Australia's climate, vegetation and settlement patterns combine to produce fires that can be intense, fast-moving and capable of destroying large numbers of buildings in a single event — and it is a growing risk because more people are living in and around bushfire-prone landscapes while fire weather is, in many areas, becoming more severe and the fire season longer. For a built-environment practitioner, the practical significance is that bushfire is not a rare or exotic hazard confined to remote areas: it is a mainstream design and construction consideration across much of the country, and the decisions made when siting, designing and building a structure can materially change whether it survives.

Australia's environment is, in many regions, naturally fire-prone. Large parts of the continent carry vegetation that dries out and burns readily, and hot, dry, windy conditions create the fire weather in which bushfires start easily and spread rapidly. Fires can be driven by strong winds across long distances, can generate their own local weather, and can throw burning material well ahead of the main fire front. Because so much of Australia's population lives near bush, forest, grassland or coastal scrub — in outer suburbs, regional towns, rural-residential estates and tree-change communities — a great many buildings sit within reach of a potential bushfire. This zone where development meets fire-prone vegetation is often called the wildland-urban interface, and it is precisely where the building-loss problem concentrates.