2011 - Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences ...

Roger Pielke, Jr.
Influence of Location, Population and Climate
on Building Damage and Fatalities Due to
Australian Bushfire: 1925–2009
FUNDING: NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
This study (Crompton
et al., 2010), conducted
in collaboration with
colleagues at Macquarie
University in Sydney,
Australia, reevaluates
the history of building
damage and loss of life
due to bushfire (wildfire)
in Australia since 1925
in light of the 2009 Black
Saturday fires in Victoria
in which 173 people lost
their lives and 2,298 homes
were destroyed along with
many other structures. Historical
records are normalized
to estimate building
damage and fatalities had
events occurred under the
societal conditions of 2008/09. There are relationships between
normalized building damage and the El Niño–Southern
Oscillation and Indian Ocean dipole phenomena, but there is
no discernable evidence that the normalized data are being
Aerial view of northern Sydney showing the highly dissected and complex
interface (red line) between brushland (dark green) and urban areas.
influenced by climatic change due to the emission of greenhouse
gases.
Our result—that there is no discernable evidence that
normalized building damage is being influenced by climate
change due to the emission of greenhouse gases—is not surprising
when you consider that bushfire damage is not solely
a function of bushfire weather; far from it, in fact. Even given
a gradual aggravation of bushfire weather due to anthropogenic
climate change or other factors, a bushfire still has to
be ignited. Once ignited, a bushfire then has to traverse the
landscape and impact a populated area, where outcomes in
terms of damage will be a function of the spatial disposition of
dwellings with respect to the fire front, and especially distance
of properties from the bushland boundary (McAneney et al.,
2009). These factors all contribute a large degree of stochasticity
to eventual event-loss outcomes.
Annual Aggregated Bushfire HE/Fatalities and Corresponding Normalized Values for Bushfire Years 192-2008
Figure 1: (a) Annual aggregate house equivalents (HE)for
bushfire events in Peril, Australia, for years beginning July 1; (b)
as in (a) but with HE normalized to 2008 brushfire year values.
Figure 2: (a) Annual aggregate fatalities for brushfire events in the
Haynes et al. (2010) database for years beginning July 1; (b) as in
(a) but with fatalities normalized to 2008 brushfire year values.
CIRES Annual Report 2011 45