A QUT study of buildings lost to bushfire on Queensland’s Scenic Rim in the 2019/20 Black Summer has identified key vulnerabilities of homes in bushfire-prone areas and ways communities could increase their homes’ resilience.
The team from Wind and Fire Lab in QUT’s School of Civil & Environmental Engineering and QUT Centre for Robotics in QUT’s School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics and the Research Engineering Facility used advanced drone-based technologies and computational heat transfer models, bushfire flame and radiant heat experiments and field studies to forensically identify features that contributed to building loss and vulnerabilities of existing buildings.
The project investigators, Dr Sahani Hendawitharana, Dr Anthony Ariyanayagam, Professor Mahen Mahendran, Professor Felipe Gonzalez, Dr Dmitry Bratanov and Gavin Broadbent, worked with the Scenic Rim Regional Council, the Queensland Fire Department Live Fire Campus, the Beechmont Rural Fire Service and local residents.
Further details: https://www.qut.edu.au/about/faculty-of-engineering/school-of-architecture-and-built-environment/news-and-events?id=199511
