Historical instances of escaped backburns and prescribed burns will be evaluated by investigating their associated weather conditions and topographic setting to better understand the role of vorticity-driven lateral spread (VLS). The research will develop a risk assessment decision support tool for conducting tactical backburns and strategic hazard reduction burns.

The methods will involve a data extraction, spatial statistical modelling and detailed case studies examining cases of extreme fire behaviour, including coupled fire-atmosphere modelling where appropriate.

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