The Building Act 2004 now requires Territorial Authorities (TAs) to have in place a policy setting out how they intend making existing buildings that would be unable to withstand a moderate earthquake safe for their occupiers. Many of the resultant policies developed by TAs have put in place mandatory upgrade requirements that will force owners to expend large amounts of capital on seismic upgrading of their buildings. The challenge for the property owners and TAs alike is to make such development work economic or the result will be wide scale demolition of old buildings. This has serious implications for both heritage conservation and inner city revitalisation plans that are based on existing heritage buildings. This paper sets out the issues and challenges for the seismic upgrading of buildings in New Zealand and puts forward some potential solutions
Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) as a tool offers opportunities for modeling the inherent complexity and uncertainty associated with socio-environmental systems. This study draws on New Zealand ski
fields (multiple locations) as socio- environmental systems while considering their perceived resilience to low
probability but potential high consequences catastrophic natural events (specifically earthquakes). We gathered
data at several ski fields using a mixed methodology including: geomorphic assessment, qualitative interviews,
and an adaptation of Ozesmi and Ozesmi’s (2003) multi-step fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) approach. The data
gathered from FCM are qualitatively condensed, and aggregated to three different participant social groups. The
social groups include ski fields users, ski industry workers, and ski field managers. Both quantitative and
qualitative indices are used to analyze social cognitive maps to identify critical nodes for ANN simulations. The
simulations experiment with auto-associative neural networks for developing adaptive preparation, response and
recovery strategies. Moreover, simulations attempt to identify key priorities for preparation, response, and
recovery for improving resilience to earthquakes in these complex and dynamic environments. The novel mixed
methodology is presented as a means of linking physical and social sciences in high complexity, high uncertainty
socio-environmental systems. Simulation results indicate that participants perceived that increases in Social
Preparation Action, Social Preparation Resources, Social Response Action and Social Response Resources have
a positive benefit in improving the resilience to earthquakes of ski fields’ stakeholders.
