Conduct a grassfire emergency risk assessment for the western plains

What is going on

The seasonal outlook indicates above normal fire potential on the western volcanic plains and the Summer Readiness Plan schedules twelve community meetings from 6 October. Before they begin the manager wants a refreshed emergency risk assessment for grassfire across the twelve localities, prepared with the councils and land managers using the national emergency risk assessment guidance. The organisation holds incident data in the Incident and Dispatch Log, hazard and permit data in the Inspections, Permits and Programs Register, and the roadside prescribed burn approvals. Early season grass fires have already occurred at Inverleigh. The assessment must produce treatment options for the regional plan and the messages that community meetings will carry, and it is due on 28 September.

Your brief

Establish the context for the assessment, identify and analyse grassfire risk across the twelve localities with stakeholders, evaluate and prioritise the risks, develop and cost treatment options, and recommend what goes into the regional emergency management plan and the community meetings.

Work through it

You do not need to do it all. Doing a few of these will show you what the work is like. Your ticks and notes stay on this device.

• Read the Summer Readiness and Emergency Management Plan and the Community Safety and Fire Prevention Policy, and set out the scope, objectives, stakeholders, criteria and method for the assessment following the national guidance.
• Extract the last three seasons of grass and bush fire incidents for the twelve localities from the Incident and Dispatch Log and summarise causes, locations, sizes and response times.
• Review the Inspections, Permits and Programs Register for burn permits, prescribed burns and known hazards in the localities, and gather land use, fuel, access and vulnerable community information from the councils and land managers.
• Facilitate a risk assessment workshop with the stakeholders, or a documented consultation, to identify risk scenarios, analyse likelihood and consequence against the criteria, and record confidence levels.
• Evaluate the risks, rank them, and identify where the current controls in the readiness plan, permits, prescribed burns and community programs are adequate and where they are not.
• Develop treatment options for the priority risks covering prevention, preparedness, response and recovery, with indicative costs, owners and timing, and assess each for effectiveness and feasibility.
• Recommend the treatments to be adopted in the regional plan and the messages and preparedness actions to be carried by the community meetings, aligned to the approved messaging library.
• Prepare the risk assessment report for the manager with the register of risks and treatments and a monitoring and review schedule.

What someone in this role would produce

• A context statement with scope, stakeholders, criteria and method
• An incident and hazard data summary for the twelve localities
• A risk register with analysis, evaluation and confidence levels
• A treatment options analysis with recommendations
• A risk assessment report with a review schedule