App a world-first in bushfire safety
App a world-first in bushfire safety
15 May 2013
published by www.bordermail.com.au
Australia — NEW homes built in Alpine Shire will benefit from world-first bushfire protection technology.
An iPad application developed by the council helps work out the bushfire attack level for various sites on a block of land.
The technology was launched yesterday by Victorian Planning Minister Matthew Guy at Eurobin.
Development services and amenity manager Nick Vlahandreas helped create the app, which uses cloud technology to process calculations that produce up to four plans a landowner can then use when applying for a planning permit.
It streamlines the planning permit process when assessing applications under the Bushfire Management Overlay, Mr Vlahandreas said.
The way that it does that is it enables the planners to meet landowners pre-application and assess multiple sites for a building.
Mr Vlahandreas said previously people would submit an application and then if there was a problem with the siting they would be asked for further information.
The landowner would go back and assess another site, the information would come back and this might happen three or four times, he said.
That could take anywhere up to six months, with all the extra costs that involved.
What were able to do using the application is assist the landowner out on site before they make an application and then get an answer for them, he said.
The calculations take about 20 seconds and all-up the meeting takes about 30 minutes to an hour.
At the end of that what were able to produce for the landowner is four plans that we will email to them on the spot and they can submit that with their planning permit application, along with the other stuff they normally have to do.
Mr Vlahandreas said the CFA was happy with both the methodology and the app, which used an inbult GPS to calculate where someone was on a block of land.
