Overview

Fire management will become more difficult because:

  • the number of fires is increasing
  • extreme fire behaviour and changing land use create complex and challenging situations

Continued investment in fire science is needed to:

  • better understand wildland fire
  • prevent, mitigate and respond to threatening fires
  • facilitate fires’ natural role in wildland ecosystems

Ontario has collaborative research agreements to help with our evidence-based approaches to fire management. The agreements help us explore, develop and implement innovative solutions to manage fires and protect our communities and natural resources.

Collaborative research agreements

University of Toronto

We are providing the University of Toronto with $90,000 to fund research into fuel management to enhance fire mitigation and optimize firefighting resource deployment and response.

The university will also work on modelling fire behaviour and enhancing tools for evidence-based decision making and knowledge exchange.

Laurentian University

We are providing Laurentian University with $75,000 to fund research evaluating the risk of heat stress in wildland firefighters and assessing factors contributing to fatigue in wildland fire response staff.

Laurentian University will also develop nutritional resources to support wildland firefighters.

Western University

We are providing Western University with $67,500 to fund research into data science that will improve our understanding of important elements of wildland fire risk, mitigation and prevention.

Western University will also develop research to better identify the factors that contribute to firefighter injuries and understand injury mitigation.

Canadian Forest Service

We are providing the Canadian Forest Service with $67,500 to fund research to study the performance of airtankers and integrated fire intelligence and decision support systems, including the integration of the WildFireSat satellite mission.

Their research will also improve the understanding of fire smoke and emissions.