Victoria Fire History Records with Severity Data from 1903

Spatial fire records for Victoria, Australia, span from 1903 to the 2022/23 season, with fire severity classifications included from 1998 onward. The dataset, updated in August 2023 by the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, aggregates bushfires and planned burns primarily on public land, incorporating CFA data for private land fires since 2009. Data has been reclassified using a standardized burn severity procedure, though some severity data for specific regions and years is missing.

Use Cases

• Modeling wildfire risk and recurrence based on historical fire spatial extents.
• Analyzing fire severity trends over time using the post-fire burn classification data.
• Assessing the effectiveness of planned burn programs by comparing them with wildfire records.
• Mapping cumulative fire history in specific areas using GIS techniques on overlapping fire polygons.

Strengths

• Long temporal coverage, with records starting in 1903 and including data up to the 2022/23 season.
• Includes standardized fire severity classification data from 1998 onward, following a documented procedure.
• Combines data from multiple sources, including bushfires, planned burns, and fires on private land.

Limitations

• Missing fire severity data for the Gippsland region for the 2018/19 and 2019/20 seasons.
• Row count and specific column definitions are unknown, requiring inspection after download.
• The aggregation of historic severity classes uses a conservative approach that may reduce detail for older records.

Provenance

Source

Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (Victoria, Australia)

Collection Method

Aggregated spatial records from public land agencies and the Country Fire Authority (CFA).

Time Range

1903 to 2022/23

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-09 07:05:15.637598; includes data up to the 2022/23 season.

Geography

Victoria, Australia