February 2025 - NBIC Update

Future funding

Funding for the National Bushfire Intelligence Capability (NBIC) Stage 2 concludes in June 2025. Throughout the second half of 2024 the NBIC team engaged with state, territory and Commonwealth collaborators and stakeholders through workshops, meetings, briefings and a survey to identify the priorities for work in NBIC Stage 3.

A business case has now been created for NBIC Stage 3 and has been submitted to relevant Commonwealth agencies for consideration.

We would like to thank the members of our governance groups for their significant efforts in facilitating and gathering this input and providing their feedback.

Our governance groups will be updated on the content and progress of this business case at their regular meetings in February and March.

Data spotlight - National bushfire extents

For over a century, state and territory bushfire management agencies have collected data describing the occurrence and extent of fires. Black Summer taught us that a national picture was needed.

A national picture helps us understand current bushfire impact, identifying regions that require assistance with recovery, and detecting changes in fuel hazard levels.

The national bushfire extent datasets have proved to be very popular within agencies and the broader public who are seeking an understanding of historical and current fire extents.

Recently, Geoscience Australia compiled usage statistics. These showed over 2 million data requests for national accumulated bushfire extents, with nearly 8 million requests for the national near real-time bushfire extents.

These services would not be possible without significant time and effort from each of the contributing jurisdictional agencies and is a testament to the national collaboration that has continued to strengthen through NBIC.

The National Bushfire Intelligence Capability is funded by the Australian Climate Service, led by CSIRO and supported by the National Emergency Management Agency.

We take a collaborative approach to work with national, state and territory agencies.