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Paper short abstract:

As bushfires have become more intense and frequent, how do those labouring to make their potentialities “real” relate to their computational companions? Examining such questions offers insight into how models and platforms are sedimented into the impossible work of controlling a world of risks.

Paper long abstract:

As bushfires have become more intense and frequent under the influence of climate change, and political and social pressure to intervene in their increasing risks builds, fire management in countries such as Australia, Canada and the United State have called upon a growing number of computer models and platforms to imagine, anticipate, and intervene in flammable landscapes. But just as proliferating virtual fires have made real forests and fires legible and governable in novel ways, or at least that is how it seems, they have also made fire managers and their tools newly available to contest and audit. In this paper, I examine the social and political life of Australia’s most widely used fire simulator - known as Phoenix - through the work of a large state land and emergency management bureaucracy in southeast Australia. With the bureaucracy’s policies and practice falling under the scrutiny of a series of formal audits, alongside continual public criticism, how do those labouring to make fires’ potentialities “real” relate to and animate their computational companion? Examining such questions, I suggest, offers renewed insight into how computer models and platforms are sedimented into the impossible work of controlling a world of risks.