Planning and bushfire risk in a changing climate

The focus of this report by the University of Canberra is on the role of urban and regional planning in relation to fire risk and emergency management. [...] A further issue raised in the 1984 House of Representatives report was the need to combine planning and development approval processes with improved vegetation and bushfire mapping and zoning approaches, to identify high bushfire risk areas and high biodiversity areas—noting the need to map and zone for other hazards at the same time, to gain a full understanding of the risk profile of any given a. [...] Planning approaches also need to factor in the risk 8 Planning and bushfire risk in a changing climate that such disaster mitigation devices might fail under catastrophic bushfire conditions, pointing to the importance of the concept of shared responsibility and drawing on a mix of risk reduction strategies, modelled on a range of socioeconomic and climate scenarios (Muller and Li, 2010; Norman an. [...] While major bushfires across South Australia and Victoria in 1983 ushered in a new appreciation of the need to integrate spatial planning and bushfire risk management, the New South Wales 1993-94 bushfires, which resulted in four deaths and the loss of over 200 homes, signalled the beginnings of a more complex conceptualisation of the notion of risk, and therefore of planning for risk, as well as. [...] However, there are emerging signs of exploration of broader issues, such as the role of planning in promoting placemaking, liveable communities and sustainable urban design that factors in bushfire risk (Cohen, 2003; Odger et al., 2003), and the planning implications of the socioeconomic complexity of rural/urban interface populations and individual understandings of bushfire risk (Cottrell and Ki.