Understanding risk

Victoria's bushfire risk profile tells a story of how bushfire risk changes over time, based on bushfire history and our fuel management activities.

The figure below shows Victoria's bushfire risk profile from 1980 to 2021 and its forecast risk to 2024. We use this information to predict how our future planned burning will change risk and to compare the effectiveness of different bushfire management strategies.

The figure shows Victoria’s bushfire risk has decreased from last year. The decrease is due to fuel reduction from the combination of planned burning and the bushfire season offsetting the regrowth in fuels since last year. Due to minimal bushfire activity in 2020–21, the majority of risk reduction during this period was attributable to planned burning.

For fuel management on public land, the government will set a statewide target to maintain bushfire risk at, or below, 70 per cent of Victoria’s maximum bushfire risk. Based on the current assessment of risk, this will involve treating approximately 200,00 hectares per year. Where and how much land needs to be treated to keep bushfire risk at or below 70% will vary each year based on fire history, fuel loads and climate.

Under our integrated, risk-based approach, fuel management such as planned burning will be conducted in all parts of the landscape – around towns and assets and in the back country.

Modelling shows that we can significantly reduce risk through fuel management in remote areas. Knowing where fires are likely to start means we can reduce fuel loads and stop small fires from building momentum and spreading. This stops them from becoming major bushfires and gives our fire agencies a greater opportunity to control them before they affect our communities.

It is important to understand the impacts of bushfires to not only life and property, but to infrastructure, the environment, businesses and communities. Many people and industries – including asthma sufferers, grape growers and bee keepers – and many native plants and animals are vulnerable to bushfires and can be affected by planned burning.

We are developing ways to measure the costs and benefits of different bushfire risk reduction strategies on the things we value – both how effective they are at reducing risk and their impacts.

This includes impacts on lives, property, critical and community infrastructure, businesses, cultural heritage, ecological resilience, biodiversity including threatened species, and ecosystem services, such as water, landscape amenity, carbon and climate moderation including smoke. Understanding these impacts is important to ensure our bushfire management actions keep Victorians safe without creating unnecessary impacts on the things we value most.

We can measure bushfire risk for the whole of Victoria and at local regional scales. Bushfire Risk Regions are geographical areas of Victoria that are grouped together because bushfires tend to behave in a similar way in those locations. There are seven regions across Victoria and we strategically plan for bushfire management in each region.

We need to manage each region differently so that our actions meet the unique needs of local communities and ecosystems.

Bushfire risk is not evenly distributed across all seven risk regions. The amount of bushfire risk in a region is related to where communities and assets are located, the size of those communities, the types and arrangements of vegetation (fuel) and topography. Not all communities at highest risk from bushfires are located immediately adjacent to forests and other vegetation.

This map shows the residual risk in each region throughout Victoria.

Because bushfires burn on private and public land, land and fire agencies will work with you to deliver an integrated approach to fuel management.

Modelling shows that by only managing fuel on public land, bushfire risk is unlikely to get below about 40 per cent. Achieving this level of risk reduction would also require a significant amount of fuel management – a level that would likely have major impacts on native plants and animals and would not be sustainable for our communities. That's why fuel management on public land needs to be integrated with the management of private land, as well as other management strategies to reduce bushfire risk.