Burning anticipation: Wildfire, risk mitigation and simulation modelling in Victoria, Australia. (October 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Neale, Timothy
• Other Names: MacLeavy Julie guest-editor.; Roberts Susan guest-editor.; Strauss Kendra guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Environment and planning. Volume 48:Number 10(2016)
• Page Start: 2026
• Page End: 2045
• Publication Date: 2016-10
• Subjects: Anticipation -- Australia -- calculation -- risk -- wildfire; City planning -- Periodicals; Regional planning -- Periodicals; City planning; Regional planning; Periodicals; 333.7
• DOI: 10.1177/0308518X16651446
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0308-518X

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. This paper draws upon the burgeoning literature on anticipatory regimes to analyse an in-depth case study of a government pilot in the highly fire-prone State of Victoria, where practitioners have utilised a simulation model to measure and intervene in the distribution of wildfire risk. The pilot presents the 'calculative collective device' (Callon and Muniesa, 2005) of wildfire management at a moment of what I label 'calculative rearticulation', wherein figurations of the future are rebooted, reconstructed or recalibrated; such moments, I suggest, can reorient the institutionally conservative spaces – such as environmental or risk management – providing opportunities for practitioners and others to interrogate the existing distribution of hazards and anticipatory interventions. Through such opportunities 'hazardous' more-than-human landscapes can be imagined otherwise.