Source: Victoria Country Fire Authority
The escalating global outlook about fire seasons highlights the urgent need for unprecedented international collaborative learning and knowledge-sharing in bushfire management.
In October 2025, Natural Hazards Research Australia and Wildfire Resilience Consortium of Canada (WRCC) announced a landmark partnership to support bushfire research, resilience and knowledge sharing.
The agreement creates a formal pathway to share the knowledge of each country to address the growing risks of natural hazards and bushfires through science, collaboration and community engagement. Both countries will benefit from evidence-based tools and strategies that enhance all-hazards preparedness, response and recovery capability.
Natural Hazards Research Australia CEO Andrew Gissing and WRCC Executive Director Garnet Mierau attended the signing at Thompson Rivers University, British Columbia.
“Advancing our knowledge around natural hazards risk of bushfire relies on local and global partnerships. Combined partnership efforts ensure we are doing the utmost to enhance public safety, resilience and sustainability locally and globally,” Andrew Gissing said.
“This historic collaboration supports cooperation across mutual areas of interest and global relevance in wildfire resilience, scientific research and capacity building in Australia and Canada,” Garnet Mierau said.
Critical to both organisations is their focus on fostering greater collaboration between researchers, government agencies and the emergency management sector to ensure new knowledge supports decision-making.
The collaboration will focus on aligned objectives to:
- strengthen community resilience to natural hazards
- promote evidence-based decision-making
- foster collaboration across government, academia, Indigenous communities and industry
- address the increasing frequency and severity of climate-driven disasters.
Future collaboration may include transnational bushfire resilience frameworks, best practices in Indigenous fire management and climate adaptation research and disaster simulation technologies.
| Submitted by | Ainsley Burgess |
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