On Monday 26 June, the Office of the NSW Chief Scientist & Engineer (OCSE) held an event for the French Bushfire Management Trade Mission, hosted by NSW Rural Fire Service at their Headquarters in Olympic Park. The event was a great success with over 70 attendees including French companies, NSW companies supported through OCSE’s Bushfire Response Research and Development (R&D) Mission, research organisations, the Minderoo Foundation and government delegates.
The day began with a Welcome to Country and Smoking Ceremony recognising the cultural importance of fire in the landscape to the Aboriginal people and its significance in modern fire management. A key theme of the day was to share learnings, experiences and make lasting connections with delegates hearing from a range of speakers including French Trade Commissioner Stéphanie Morley, and NSW RFS Commissioner Rob Rogers AFSM, with companies and research groups providing a brief pitch on their innovations and opportunities to partner. The delegation had a tour of the impressive RFS operations centre where they learned about how the NSW Government responds to emergency events and new areas of innovation to help improve bushfire detection and risk assessment using a broad range of tools, such as social media and sophisticated data analysis.
It was also an opportunity to showcase OCSE’s Bushfire Response R&D Mission and how it is accelerating the commercial development adoption of new technologies to help solve the challenges around how we prepare for and response to bushfires, as well as helping to develop the talent pipeline to support these future industries.
OCSE worked in close collaboration with Investment NSW’s Global Markets team to promote NSW as a world-class investment destination for research and innovative bushfire technology companies.