Download 4.17 MB For border communities, one of the big frustrations and challenges of last summer's bushfire disaster was the way that fire information stopped at borders. At one point, a map projecting the possible spread of the Orroral Valley fire in the ACT stopped at the NSW border. the fire would eventually destroy homes in bordering NSW communities. The bushfire royal commission also called for better communication across borders both among agencies, and also in how those agencies communicate with the public CSIRO's data research arm Data 61, is on it. Senior principal research scientist Dr Mahesh Prakash told Anna Vidot about the Spark tool they are developing, to predict and map fire spread, and to do that consistently, nationally, regardless of borders.