ICS Seminar Series - Timothy Neale

Date: Thursday 23 July 2015
Time: 11.30am - 1pm
Venue: EE.G.02, Western Sydney University, Parramatta South campus

Timothy Neale

Towards Calculability: Wildfire, Risk Mitigation, and Simulation Modelling in Southwest Victoria, Australia

Abstract

Wildfire is a global environmental 'problem' with significant socioeconomic and socionatural impacts that does not lend itself to simple technical fixes (Gill et al., 2013: 439). In Australia, a country with a pronounced history of disastrous landscape fires, these impacts are expected to increase as the peri-urban population continues to grow and the climate continues to change. Over the past decade, wildfire simulation models have emerged as an important tool in managing this problem, capable of generating forecasts of wildfire behaviour across a range of probabilities. This paper reports on a case study of the Barwon-Otway area of southwest Victoria, where simulation modelling has recently been used to test a novel approach to the calculation and mitigation of wildfire risk. Through in-depth interviews with practitioners engaged in wildfire risk mitigation, this paper reveals the uncertainties and pragmatics necessary to the application of an 'objective' model to an idiosyncratic landscape. As such, this case study furthers insights into an aspect of environmental management often obscured in socio-geographical research: the ways in which models are 'at large' in governance (Svetlova and Dirksen, 2014).

Biography

Timothy Neale is a Research Fellow in the Institute for Culture and Society. His research focuses on environmental knowledges, environmental politics and critical theory, and he is currently the principal investigator of a project funded by the Bushfire & Natural Hazards CRC examining the use of scientific knowledge in bushfire and flood risk mitigation. He is the co-editor of History, Power, Text: Cultural Studies and Indigenous Studies (UTS E-Press, Sydney, 2014) and his work has been published in Australian Humanities Review, Griffith Law Review and Continuum.

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The Institute for Culture and Society is located in Parramatta, “the place where the eel sets down” in Dharug language,
along the north bank of the Parramatta River. It sits on the traditional lands and waters of the Burramattagal people of the Dharug Nation,
who have been stewards and caretakers of these territories since time immemorial, in what today is referred to as Greater Western Sydney,
one of the most diverse cultural communities in the world and home to the largest number of Indigenous Australians in the country.
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