Reference Document - Bushfire Risk Assessment & Bushfire Risk Management Plan

                         Ecological Natural Area Management



6 Bushfire risk assessment
As the house is mapped in a High Potential Bushfire Intensity area on the Noosa Plan Bushfire
hazard Overlay Map, this report will detail bushfire hazard assessments for:
      •    The Noosa Plan
      •    Queensland State Planning Policy 2017 and
      •    Australian Standard AS 3959 as referenced by the National Construction Code of Australia.

6.1       Assessment of the Potential Bushfire Intensity Class
As required by The Noosa Plan, this report will use the the protocol specified in A new methodology
for state-wide mapping of bushfire prone areas (Leonard et al, 2014) as specified by Queensland
State Planning Policy 2017 to assess the bushfire prone area status of the development.
This methodology uses the following parameters.
      •    Potential Fuel Load
           This is derived from Vegetation Hazard Classes table in the protocol. The table was derived
           by relating vegetation community derived by combining Remnant Vegetation Regional
           Ecosystem types and their Fire Regime Groups developed by the Queensland Parks and
           Wildlife Service (Neldner et al, 2012) to a potential fuel load using the methodology of the
           Overall Fuel Hazard Assessment Guideline .
      •    Patch and corridor filtering
           Patch and corridor filtering can be used to remove or downgrade hazard levels of small
           patches of vegetation and narrow corridors.
      •    Maximum Landscape Slope
           The Maximum Landscape Slope is derived for 25m pixel separations.
      •    Fire Weather Severity
           An expected McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index using a 1:20 year or 5% annual
           exceedance probability was derived for all areas in Queensland to reflect the severity of
           bushfire events suited to mitigation through land use planning and this expected maximum
           FDI is presented in as a map in Figure 16: Fire weather severity for Queensland in A new
           methodology for state-wide mapping of bushfire prone areas (Leonard et al, 2014). The
           Forest Fire Danger Index for this site in Figure 16 is FFDI = 50.
      •    Potential Fire-line Intensity
           With the above inputs, a Potential Fire-line Intensity can be calculated using the formula:
           PFI = 0.62 x PFL2 x FFDI x exp(0.069 x slope)
           Where:
           PFI = Potential Fireline Intensity
           PFL = Potential Fuel Load
           FFDI = Expected maximum Forest Fire Danger Index
           Slope = Maximum 25m pixel slope in degrees




Bushfire Risk Assessment and Management Plan for a house at 64 Pheasant Lane, Doonan        September 2020

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