Historical Bushfire Boundaries – Version 2.0

Please zoom in to a town or local area for data to display. Abstract The Historical Bushfire Boundaries Dataset (version 2) represents the aggregation of jurisdictional supplied burnt areas polygons that date from the early 1900s through to 2023 (excluding the Northern Territory). The burnt areas represent curated jurisdictional owned polygons of bushfires and prescribed (planned) burns. This dataset was produced under [Work Stream 1C - Activity 3] of the [National Bushfire Intelligence Capability (NBIC) ], a collaborative partnership between: * Australian Climate Service * CSIRO (NBIC) * Geoscience Australia * Emergency Management Spatial Information Network (EMSINA) Under agreement this Project (Activity 3) will release a nationally consistent, harmonised and standardised historical bushfire boundary dataset derived from the authoritative state and territory agencies in both 2023 (this dataset) and again in November 2024. The information released within this dataset is reflective of the data supplied by participating authoritative agencies. It may, or may not, represent all fire history within that jurisdiction. Geoscience Australia's role within this project is to: * negotiate access to the state/territory historic bushfire boundary datasets * aggregate, harmonise and standardise the jurisdictional data against the Australasian Fire Authorities Council (AFAC) National Bushfire Boundary Standards * host the completed spatial product(s) * arrange for the 'Historical Bushfire Boundaries' spatial dataset to be accessible through Geoscience Australia’s external data catalogues and through the new Digital Atlas of Australia platform * ensure stakeholders have access to regular project updates. To harmonsise and standardise this dataset Geoscience Australia have utilised the AFAC endorsed [data dictionary] for fire history. This data dictionary and the definitions provided allowed Geoscience Australia to map common attributes from both sources. Unfortunately, not all attributes mapped across like-for-like. This resulted in Geoscience Australia either modifying or joining some of the jurisdictional attributes to fit or Geoscience Australia added them during the processing stage. Currency Date created: 03 March 2023 Date modified: November 2023 Next modification date: November 2024 Spatial Extent * West Bounding Longitude: 112° * South Bounding Latitude: -44° * East Bounding Longitude: 154° * North Bounding Latitude: -9° Source Information Catalog entry: [Bushfire Boundaries – Historical] Lineage Statement This dataset extends upon the first version of this dataset to be built and released under the Australia Research Data Commons Project in early 2023. This dataset (version 2) represents an updated aggregation of each jurisdiction (except the Northern Territory) fire history data to include information from the 2022-23 bushfire season. Agencies that have provided data include: * Australian Capital Territory Parks and Conservation * New South Wales Parks and Wildlife Service * Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service * South Australia Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources * Tasmania Department of Natural Resources and Environment * Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning * Western Australia Department of Fire and Emergency Services The Northern Territory Government is progressing in the development of their Bushfire Boundary Capabilities. Work is underway with the relevant agencies to incorporate Northern Territory Government approved Historical Bushfire Boundary data in the future. Product standardisation: The data provided by each jurisdiction is standardised and harmonised. This process maps the existing state/territory attributes to the National Data Schema that was agreed to and endorsed by the participating state agencies and the [Australian Fire and Emergency Services Authorities Council]. The Digital Atlas of Australia data team published an optimised Bushfire Boundaries Historic dataset designed to perform efficiently in either a desktop application or a web service. This process utilised FME to reduce the processing time on millions of vertices within the complex dataset: 1. Dataset projected to epsg:4326 to align with the near real time services hosted on the Digital Atlas of Australia 2. Removes island or donut polygons within a fire extent, therefore a fire extent is shown with an outline and no internal parts 3. Create separate polygon chunks based on 10000 vertices while maintaining the same attributes for each chunk of the identified fire, if a fire consists of multiple polygons each polygon is counted separately within the identified fire As a result the Bushfire Boundaries Historic dataset hosted in the Digital Atlas of Australia has more records than the original dataset. Data Dictionary All Layers ──────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Attribute Name│Description ──────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── fire_id │ID attached to fire (e.g. incident ID, Event ID, Burn ID). ──────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── fire_name │Incident name. If available. ──────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── fire_type │Binary variable to describe whether a fire was a bushfire or prescribed burn. ──────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ignition_date │The date of the ignition of a fire event. Date and time are local time zone from the State where the fire is located and stored as a string. ──────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── capt_date │The date of the incident boundary was captured or updated. Date and time are local time zone from the Jurisdiction where the fire is located and stored as a string. ──────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── capt_method │Categorical variable to describe the source of data used for defining the spatial extent of the fire. ──────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── area_ha │Burnt area in Hectares. Currently calculated field so that all areas calculations are done in the same map projection. Jurisdiction supply area in appropriate projection to match state incident reporting system. ──────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── perim_km ) │Burnt perimeter in Kilometres. Calculated field so that all areas calculations are done in the same map projection. Jurisdiction preference is that supplied perimeter calculations are used for consistency with jurisdictional reporting. ──────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── state │State custodian of the data. NOTE: Currently some states use and have in their feeds cross border data ──────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── agency │Agency that is responsible for the incident ──────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── date_retrieved│The date and time that Geoscience Australia retrieved this data from the jurisdictions, stored as UTC. Please note when viewed in ArcGIS Online, the date is converted from UTC to your local time. ──────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Fire Type definitions ────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Data Source Category│Description ────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Bushfire │Unplanned vegetation fire. A generic term which includes grass fires, forest fires and scrub fires both with and without a suppression objective. Also known as wildfire, accident, arson, lightning. ────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Prescribed Burn │The controlled application of fire under specified environmental conditions to a predetermined area and at the time, intensity, and rate of spread required to attain planned resource management objectives. Also known as planned burning, fuel reduction, traditional owner, ecological, hazard reduction ────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Unknown │Fire type is undetermined. ────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Ignition Cause definitions ────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Data Source Category│Description ────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Accidental │Fires that are not the result of a deliberate (intentional) act. ────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Natural │Fires that ignite without human intervention. ────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Incendiary │Fires result from deliberate acts, intentional actions, or circumstances for the fire to occur in areas where it should not have occurred. ────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Undetermined │Fires that have not yet been investigated, under investigation or fires that have been investigated and the cause is not proven to an acceptable level of certainty. ────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Capture Method definitions ───────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Data Source Category │Description ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Aerial photography │Derived from Aerial photography including manual interpretation as well as partially automated and fully automated methods. ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Linescanner │Mapped against airborne sensor systems. ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Ground intelligence │Mud map from ground observation. ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Ground intelligence GPS│Fire boundary derived from ground (e.g. GPS tracker, Avenza). ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Air intelligence │Mud map from air observation. ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Air intelligence │GPS Fire boundary derived from air (e.g. helicopter, spotter). ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Himawari │Derived from geostationary satellite Himawari and includes manual interpretation as well as partially automated and fully automated methods (spatial accuracy ± 2 kilometres). ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── NOAA AVHRR │Derived from Low Resolution - NOAA AVHRR satellite including manual interpretation, partially automated and fully automated methods (spatial accuracy ± 1 kilometres). ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── MODIS │Derived from Low Resolution - MODIS satellite imagery including manual interpretation as well as partially automated and fully automated methods (spatial accuracy ± 250 metres). ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── VIIRS │Derived from Low Resolution - VIIRS satellite imagery including manual interpretation as well as partially automated and fully automated methods (spatial accuracy ± 375 metres). ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Landsat │Derived from Medium Resolution - Landsat satellite imagery including manual interpretation as well as partially automated and fully automated methods (spatial accuracy ± 30 metres). ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Sentinel │Derived from Medium Resolution - Sentinel satellite imagery including manual interpretation as well as partially automated and fully automated methods (spatial accuracy ± 10 - 20 metres). ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Multiple │Derived from multiple sources e.g. combination of ground intel and linescanner. For detailed information contact agency or state responsible. ───────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Unknown │Data Source is unknown. ───────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Contact Geoscience Australia, [clientservices@ga.gov.au]