Burning anticipation : wildfire, risk mitigation and simulation modelling in Victoria, Australia

Wildfire is a global environmental 'problem' with significant socioeconomic and socionatural impacts that does not lend itself to simple technical fixes (Gill et al., 2013: 439). In Australia, a country with a pronounced history of disastrous landscape fires, these impacts are expected to increase as the peri-urban population continues to grow and the climate continues to change. This paper draws upon the burgeoning literature on anticipatory regimes to analyse an in-depth case study of a government pilot in the highly fire-prone State of Victoria, where practitioners have utilised a simulation model to measure and intervene in the distribution of wildfire risk. The pilot presents the 'calculative collective device' (Callon and Muniesa, 2005) of wildfire management at a moment of what I label 'calculative rearticulation', wherein figurations of the future are rebooted, reconstructed or recalibrated; such moments, I suggest, can reorient the institutionally conservative spaces" such as environmental or risk management" providing opportunities for practitioners and others to interrogate the existing distribution of hazards and anticipatory interventions. Through such opportunities 'hazardous' more-than-human landscapes can be imagined otherwise.