Science, Community, Culture

At the Fire Centre, we focus on three major goals: facilitating trans-disciplinary science, empowering community preparedness, recognising and understanding fire and human culture.

Facilitating Trans-disciplinary Science

As a scientific hub at a research institution, our main goal is facilitating scientific research. We bring together diverse researchers across the University of Tasmania along with practitioners from across the state and the globe. We facilitate scientific collaboration among diverse perspectives, both in terms of expertise and personal backgrounds. We strive to include perspectives not traditionally heard from in fire science, such as social scientists, legal experts, medical professionals, indigenous people, women, and minorities, among many others.

Empowering Communities to develop local solutions

While at our core, we are a scientific research institution, we feel that scientific research on it’s own is merely academic. At the Fire Centre we believe that research must be translated into actual solutions to community problems. This involves collaborating with government agencies, local councils, and community groups. More importantly, it means providing communities with the technical expertise to develop their own local fire-preparedness solutions.

Understanding Fire in the Context of Traditional Culture

Traditional fire knowledge and management practices are being lost throughout the world. In Australia, we live in a landscape embedded with tens of thousands of years of indigenous fire-management practices. As fire scientists and practitioners, it is our intellectual and moral imperative to understand traditional fire-management practices and engage with local aboriginal communities. Only through understanding traditional practices and incorporating indigenous knowledge can we develop landscapes management practices that will allow us to coexist with fire.