Episode 292: Turning Climate Data into Safer Cities with Peter Thompson & Barry Evans

Episode notes

What if we could predict the next wildfire before it started?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy.

Recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE) 2025 Conference alongside the AFAC, WAFA, and Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience Conference in Perth, Australia.

This episode features Peter Thompson and Barry Evans from the University of Canterbury. They discuss their groundbreaking “Minority Report” project, which uses future climate modeling to predict extreme weather events and help communities prepare before disaster strikes.

Peter and Barry explain how data-driven simulations of wildfires and floods are transforming how cities like Wellington approach risk, resilience, and emergency planning. From physics-based fire modeling to real-time decision tools for local governments, their work shows how foresight can save lives.

This conversation dives into the human side of climate preparedness: how collaboration, transparency, and smart modeling can guide better decisions for firefighters, councils, and communities living on the front lines of change.

So take a listen to hear what they have to share.

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources.

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro, live from Perth
2. 0:47 Meet Peter Thompson and Barry Evans
3. 1:15 The Minority Report project
4. 3:50 Modeling fire spread and floods for Wellington
5. 6:20 Dynamic maps versus static maps
6. 7:47 Iterating with the council
7. 9:21 Open data and Horizon Europe
8. 10:00 Modeling evacuations and personas
9. 11:35 Living in risky places and insurance
10. 13:16 Communicating risk to the public
11. 14:31 Words to live by: black elephants

Questions answered in this episode

What is the Minority Report project?

Peter Thompson says the project uses future predicted climate files for 25, 50, and 75 years into the future to predict disastrous events like heavy rainfall and wildfires that may endanger cities. It uses physics-based modeling to test mitigation strategies, with Wellington, New Zealand as the pilot site.

Hear it at 1:15

How is this project different from traditional planning methods?

Peter Thompson explains that most established planning uses static maps based on historical extreme events, but this project models and predicts future events and their evolution over time. You see wildfires start and spread, and floods build up showing both depth and speed of water.

Hear it at 5:50

Why does the modeling include water velocity and not just depth?

Peter Thompson points to the Valencia floods as an example where the key difference was both the depth and velocity of water moving things away. The modeling tries to differentiate when safe evacuation can start and when it should stop, because at certain points people should go upstairs rather than into the streets.

Hear it at 5:50

How does the project handle different types of people and their evacuation behaviors?

Barry Evans says the project uses census data and historical events to develop personas representing different behavioral characteristics. For instance, if a hazard occurs during the workday, someone may not evacuate immediately but may go home first to pick up pets or loved ones before moving to safety.

Hear it at 10:15

What was the black elephant concept mentioned in the episode?

Peter Thompson references a keynote by Susanna about black elephant events, which are the elephant in the room. Unlike black swan events, these are things we know are going to happen based on basic physics, not unpredicted surprises.

Hear it at 14:54

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 292 transcript

Turning Climate Data into Safer Cities with Peter Thompson & Barry Evans

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Peter Thompson, Barry Evans

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to our podcast mini-series, recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers 2025 Conference in Perth, Australia, alongside the AFAC, WAFA, and the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience Conferences. With over 28 conversations with fire chiefs, engineers, researchers and innovators, we explored how the fire and emergency community is adapting to a rapidly changing world. From climate resilience and community-led adaption, to the rise of new technologies like satellites, AI, and simple tools designed for the field, to mental health, diversity, and global collaboration. These episodes highlight the shared challenges and inspiring solutions shaping the future of safety. Enjoy. We are officially live at the IFE conference in partnership with AFAC in Perth, Australia, of all places, alongside Peter Thompson and Barry Evans from the University of Canterbury. Thank you for being my first guinea pig podcast victims this morning.

[1:02] Peter Thompson: You're welcome. Good to see you.

[1:04] Kevin Sofen: You're here at AFAC. I hear you guys are giving the presentation and we were just chatting a bit outside, but tell me a little bit about some of the work that you're doing at University of Canterbury, particularly as it relates to climate mapping and climate modeling.

[1:15] Peter Thompson: Sure. The project's called Minority Report, and the essence of it is to try and use future predicted climate files for 25, 50, 75 years into the future. Try to predict those potentially really disastrous events, the heavy rainfall wildfires, which may endanger cities. Use that data on solid physics-based modeling for the evolution of wildfires and those conditions and test out some mitigation strategies to see if we can make the city a safer place and- And really help communicate those outcomes in terms of what events might happen and then also how they might be tackled potentially with the pilot site of Wellington in the capital city of New Zealand and we're working in with the council there. you can kind of understand what might happen, we can make better decisions or had the that All right, well, it came first of all,, just from a

[2:50] Kevin Sofen: these ones and zeros into some kind of data that allows government, fire departments, [inaudible 2:56] in our lives. [inaudible 3:21]

[3:50] Barry Evans: fires interact with the buildings. And, which buildings are then indirectly at risk from this from this fire spread. Additionally, my colleagues Leah De Salas is working on the flood modeling, working very closely with Wellington City Council to develop [inaudible 4:05]

[4:20] Kevin Sofen: these wildfires to protect the lives and the e [inaudible 4:55]

[5:20] Barry Evans: a very like agile based sort of like development working very with like key stakeholders and [inaudible 5:27]

[5:50] Peter Thompson: clear So probably one of the key things that's different about the project is a lot of established planning in this area just uses static maps based on historical extreme events. But the big difference here is modeling we're predicting those future events and their evolution over time. So you see the wildfire start and spread what might happen to change the path and direction where the wind direction changes, you see the flood build up and also not just the depth but the speed of the water as well and that was one of the key things in... remember the big Valencia floods? You probably saw them on telly. That So the key change there was with the growing strength of those extreme events you're now seeing both the depth and the velocity of the water just moving things away and that was the key difference of a lot of previous events. Now it's literally, certain points in time happen where you shouldn't leave your house, and we're trying to differentiate when safe evacuation can start and frankly when it should stop, when people should go upstairs, because there's a point at which you can't go in the streets. So we're trying to look at the way those things dynamically unfold over time in a great degree of detail. And that's, for me, I mean that's probably one of the things which is different about the project and is really good at communicating that on a kind of dynamic mapping basis. Yeah.

[7:47] Kevin Sofen: And so it's today, it's, it's August, 2025, where's this going in the [inaudible 7:53]

[8:41] Peter Thompson: the council and work with the council. Barry talked about the key stakeholders, so we'll show them one iteration it, get their feedback, modify, make it more effective, find out exactly what they want to know and just check through a series of iterative changes, making sure it really works for them. And we're also hoping that those outcomes will build on us developing a technological base, which we can build on in future projects as well. So we're thinking of applying for future projects on real-time kind of now casting and also infrastructure protection as well. So there's a range of different things. Hopefully, this can springboard into. Do you want to add anything about the technical?

[9:20] Barry Evans: Yes. I say within the project itself, we're working across at a moment,. Like three different case studies. And then each case study has different levels of data available, both in my desk like resolution and quality. So all the tools and models we develop have to be adaptable to work with these different types of data sets. So the idea, once a project is coming towards the end, this information will be available to everybody. As the project is funded by Horizon Europe, they're very keen on having the data like open or, and the deliverables and everything as open as possible, to ensure that it can be picked up on by other researchers in the future and developed further.

[10:00] Peter Thompson: saying something about the definition of the population and the way we talked about the wildfire and the flood modelling, but we're also modelling the consequential community scale evacuations as well, and defining the population types and the demographics. Do you want to say a bit more about that, Barry?

[10:15] Barry Evans: In relation to that, it's very difficult to say like every sort of individual within a city, but we can get an idea from historical events, from census data, different sort of behaviours and behavioural characteristics. So within the project, we've got partners are working on the development of personas to give an idea of the people who are affected by natural hazards and what their responses would be. And this could be, for instance, if a hazard occurred during the day when someone was at work, they may not be inclined to evacuate straight away. They may go home first, particularly if they've got pets or loved ones they want to pick up first and then move to safety. So it's looking at finding people who have been affected previously and learning from experiences and making sure that we consider this within our modeling framework.

[11:03] Peter Thompson: And actually the question about the, maybe the longer term developments, one key outcome is not just the technical developments, but also because we're working with the city council, certainly the hope is that this will also help inform their planning, which is why we're so keen to make sure works for them because you talked about building better in the future. It's also about not building better in the future, i.e. avoiding areas which are gonna be at risk. So sure, building better where we're gonna be building, but also making a judgment call on, it's not gonna be safe to build there as well, so.

[11:35] Kevin Sofen: On that point of humans wanting to continue to live in areas that maybe aren't the safest to live and especially with data showing that, hey, this is actually a unsafe place due to X, Y, and Z risk factors, particularly with the vegetation and the lack of precipitation and things like that, I think it's sometimes harder for certain human is like, I want my second home in this urban interface, or this kind of sprawling . But then on the housing authority side and the city side, they're kind of like well, maybe I want the tax base, maybe I want to continue to grow and attract people here, but I know it's unsafe. It almost seems like an impossible balance, but how does that factor into the equation?

[12:33] Peter Thompson: So one of the key things for me was in New Zealand, especially the very open about sharing those predicted risk maps. And as a result, house insurance in those areas rocket since in terms, as soon as you start to realize that there's a very high probability of extreme events increasing over time, because it's not like it's not like it's just going to happen in 25 years, there's an increasing probability of it happening towards that 25 years. So you'll see your house insurance costs start to rise rapidly. And it is going to happen that it's going to be impossible to start to insure your house in those areas. Money is one of the key driving points for me. And also, I mean, ultimately the council can stop allowing building permits as well. Barry, is there anything else you want to add there?

[13:16] Barry Evans: Yeah, I think as well, it's just about how you communicate risk to the wider public. So for instance, like somebody who's been an area that's been flooded by like a 1 in 100 year event, the perception is, okay, the 1 in 100 year event has happened, I'm good for the next hundred years, when that's your case, that's not the fact, and particularly as well with climate change, like the frequency of these events are predicted to increase. So it's looking at ways of how we can communicate these risks to the public. And I know from working in the UK, like one of the simple ways was in areas that were previously flooded. They literally just had like markers on the streets, just showing the flood level got to here on this date and this time. And it's just like a poignant reminder when you're walking through the sort of risks that are present, and it's about trying to keep that awareness with the public, but also not instill fear, but just make them aware of the potential challenges that they face.

[14:08] Peter Thompson: And on top of that, because we're communicating this to the council, if we know that actually that's likely in this area, but we also lay out a pathway to mitigate it, we may be able to help them to avoid those areas is becoming problematic in the future as well. So we're not just looking at predicting those disasters, but also the potential outcomes of strategies to improve things as well.

[14:31] Kevin Sofen: Absolutely brilliant. So to kind of round us off here, I hadn't asked you about, I hadn't pre-t either of you guys with this, but I love trying to finish with any sort of like favorite quote or words of wisdom. I mean, you both obviously must be fans Minority Report, but any favorite quote, whether it's from a movie or Marcus Aurelius or whatever it may be, or something that applies to the work you're doing or life in general that you could leave us with here today?

[14:54] Peter Thompson: Well, actually one of the things from the keynote yesterday was Susanna talked about the black elephant events where it's the elephant in the room, but we know these things are gonna happen. It's not rocket science, it's just basic physics. Barry, do you want to add anything?

[15:22] Barry Evans: I was going to go with the black elephants as well. It's a phrase that I've not come across before. I was familiar with like black swan events. Like I say, like known unknowns, but like this is, yeah, it was really interesting to see on that study.

[15:34] Kevin Sofen: We know the elephants in the room.

[15:36] Peter Thompson: Exactly.

[15:37] Kevin Sofen: It's not an unpredicted black swan COVID thing.

[15:39] Peter Thompson: And it's getting bigger.

[15:42] Kevin Sofen: Well said. Well, Barry and Peter, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for being the first participants in the Tim podcast arena. And I look forward to continue to follow the great work that you lead.

[15:53] Peter Thompson: Thanks very much.

[15:54] Barry Evans: Thank you.

[15:58] Kevin Sofen: And that's a wrap for this episode of the Smart Firefighting podcast. If you found value in this conversation, hit like, leave a comment, share it to someone, and tell us what you enjoyed most. Take care and thanks for listening.