Data Science and Wildfire - Hack

Join the Melbourne Centre for Data Science for their first hack event focused on interdisciplinary peer-to-peer learning and discovery among individuals at various stages of their career.

Topic: Data science and wildfire
The urgency of wildfire study in Australia is increasing. We have all seen the reports promising us an intense summer to come and, in some areas of our country, the fires have already begun.

Wildfire affects the environment and vice versa. Wildfire affects the economy and vice versa. Wildfire affects community, disaster and resilience planning, and welfare. Wildfire affects us all. In more ways that just indicated here.

There are volumes of data available to us now. We won’t be starting from scratch but we need new approaches, new connections, new tools. We need all hands on deck – we need you!

Please join us – Melbourne Centre for Data Science and Flare Wildfire Research – for this dive into the data.

Are you a Grad student (Masters, PhD) or an Early Career Researcher (postdocs, RA, etc)? Are you a professor? Do you work in fire management? Is your area of research in data analysis, spatial, combustion engineering, landscape ecology, forest science, computer programming, invasive species or similar fields? Do you want to contribute, collaborate, and learn?

We’ll be creating teams of mixed expertise – these could look like an experienced landscape ecologist, a spatial champion, a robust coder, and a fire specialist. We’ll be exploring questions like: characterising diversity – spatial vs temporal, patterns in wildfire, redefining fire regime – what is the new normal?, land use maps …and more.

What takeaways are there to be had from this different style hack? New skills and knowledge transfer, new perspectives and community-building, the kick-start to new collaborations, new code written and understanding of advances in adjacent disciplines, among other things.

Expressions of interest are open! Closing at midnight 22 October.