National Bushfire Intelligence Capability (NBIC) Terrain release 1.0

Terrain characteristics have a large influence on bushfire behaviour, affecting the rate of advancement of fire, as well as fuel accumulation and dryness. Terrain slope and aspect datasets are derived from a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) raster and are both important input to fire behaviour models. Those fire behaviour models form the core of the National Bushfire Intelligence Capability (NBIC) workflow, used to produce nationally consistent and locally relevant bushfire hazard and risk information. While national elevation dataset exist, those are often tailored to support other applications such as hydrology, artefacts only relevant to modelling bushfires are overlooked.

Here we provide a nationally consistent, high resolution and terrain datasets, developed specifically to support fire behaviour models. This terrain dataset was developed by hybridising two smoothed DEM derived from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). This allowed to represent the full Australian continent while maintaining an optimal spatial resolution of approximately 20m. The resulting terrain elevation dataset was then post-process to account for water bodies, before being converted to terrain slope and aspect using Sobel operators. These products were independently assessed by their authors and found elevation accuracy of 9.8m for 90% of the Australian continent.

This terrain dataset was instrumental in delivering the NBIC products, by providing a consistent yet locally relevant representation of terrain characteristics. In addition, this dataset can support future improvements towards terrain elevation dataset, for example by hybridising nationally consistent terrain information with locally available LiDAR dataset.

Further information about NBIC is available at https://research.csiro.au/nbic/home/data/terrain/