PyroLife Symposium - Webinar Summaries

Highlights from the fourth PyroLife Symposium webinar on June 24, 2020 by Mario Tapia. The Netherlands has an extensive history of water management and land reclamation but with increasing risks of a changing climate have turned to a new approach, living with water rather than fighting it. Fulco Ludwig explores if similar strategies can work for fire. In recent years there has been a change in perspective in how floods are approached in the Netherlands. For hundreds of years, water was a threat to be pushed out; however, that has now changed as water is now seen more as a […]

Highlights from the fourth PyroLife Symposium webinar on June 24, 2020 by Kathleen Uyttewaal. On June 24, Bertram de Rooij told us a story. As a landscape architect, applied senior researcher at WUR, and volunteer firefighter, it was far from the usual campfire story. And yet, some common threads of stories since time immemorial like creativity, imagining the future, and learning valuable lessons with people along the way all wove their way into Bertram’s narrative. He urged us to think about Envisioning Futures and Enabling Landscapes. Landscapes, after all, set the scene where everything comes together: ecological, social, political and […]

Highlights from the third PyroLife Symposium webinar on June 17, 2020 by Kerryn Little. Dr Peter Moore of the forest fire management and disaster risk reduction sector of the FAO, a partner organisation of PyroLife, reflects on global data in living with fire and his own experiences with the FAO in community wildfire management in developing countries. Peter thoughtfully addresses a number of key issues that align closely to the values of PyroLife and leaves us with many words of wisdom to reflect on moving forwards. In 2019, it appeared the world was on fire. High-profile fires, amongst countless no-profile […]

During the 17 June webinar, we had a brief discussion on wildland fire management considerations under COVID-19, highlighting the briefing papers that Dr. Peter Moore, Dr. Cathelijne Stoof, Bethany Hannah and others co-authored. Please see below for the abstracts and links to those papers. Wildland fire management under COVID-19. Brief 1, review of materials Peter Moore, Bethany Hannah, Jasper de Vries, Marijn Poortvliet, Ron Steffens, Cathelijne R. Stoof Abstract COVID-19 will have major implications for wildland fire management, because of severe social distancing and hygiene requirements. We collected procedures and guidance created around the world to help prepare wildland fire professionals globally for […]

Highlights from the second PyroLife Symposium webinar on June 10, 2020 by Hugo Lambrechts. Does fire discriminate? It is thought that when it comes to fire risk all of society is impacted equally. It is, however, the poor and marginalized that are affected the greatest. Informal settlements make up 33% of city dwellings and 1 in 8 of settlements globally, and it is often in informal settlements where the inequality is most evident. Danielle Antonellis looked at different examples of fire safety inequality and offered some perspectives on how to address this. Although everyone is evenly at risk of being […]