Throughout the warmer months, most Australians are accustomed to hearing messages about fire risk.
But in an era of climate change and increasingly frequent and severe natural disasters, authorities found parts of the system that were not fit for purpose.
In fact, the system used to rate fire danger was designed back in the 1960s. Now fire authorities and weather experts across the country have jointly developed a new Fire Danger Rating System.
Rob Webb is the chief executive of lead agency A-FAC - the National Council for Fire and Emergency Services.
"It's a much simpler system aimed at helping our communities take the right action during bushfires. Previously, we've done some social research that suggested people while they knew there was a fire danger rating system, they didn't know what action they should take at each level. And sometimes they mixed up which level was worse than another. So we went back to the drawing board and designed a new system and also put new science in the background. So it should be more accurate, accurate, it should be able to work anywhere in Australia, and provide people with a true sense of the fire danger."
The old system had six levels of fire danger rating but there is now only four , following research with more than 5,000 people across the country in the decade since Black Saturday.
The new ratings are - moderate, high, extreme and catastrophic.
Previously, the models used to predict fire behaviour and danger were based on only two types of fuel - forest and grass.
But authorities found that did not accurately reflect of the diversity of vegetation found across the Australian landscape.
Deputy Chief Officer with Victoria's Country Fire Authority, Alen Slijepcevic [[SLIP-chev-itch]], says this will allow firefighters to better protect communities and assets in different geographical locations.
"So for example, previously we had only two fuel types, so for the Mallee forest - if you know, Victorian vegetation, that Mallee heath runs pretty much through the northwest and the west of the state. We used to base our fire danger rating on grasslands for those ones. And we know the the Mallee heath is not a grass. So we have developed better fire behaviour models that will predict if the fire starts, what they will do under different weather conditions. So this one much better reflects the actual conditions on the ground of what we can expect if the fires start and take a hold on those days."
