In the wake of the Canterbury earthquakes, one of the biggest threats to our heritage buildings is the risk of earthquakes and the associated drive to strengthen or demolish buildings. Can Small Town NZ balance the requirements of the EQPB legislation and economic realities of their places? The government’s priority is on safety of building occupants and citizens in the streets. However, maintaining and strengthening privately-owned heritage buildings is often cost prohibitive. Hence, heritage regulation has frequently been perceived as interfering with private property rights, especially when heritage buildings occupy a special place in the community becoming an important place for people (i.e. public benefits are larger than private). We investigate several case studies where building owners have been given green light to demolish heritage listed buildings to make way for modern developments. In two of the case studies developers provided evidence of unaffordable strengthening costs. A new trend that has emerged is a voluntary offer of contributing to an incentive fund to assist with heritage preservation of other buildings. This is a unique example where private owners offer incentives (via council controlled organisations) instead of it being purely the domain of the central or local governments.
Detailed studies on the sediment budget may reveal valuable insights into the successive build-up of the Canterbury Plains and their modification by Holocene fluvialaction connected to major braided rivers. Additionally, they bear implications beyond these fluvial aspects. Palaeoseismological studies claim to have detected signals of major Alpine Fault earthquakes in coastal environments along the eastern seaboard of the South Island (McFadgen and Goff, 2005). This requires high connectivity between the lower reaches of major braided rivers and their mountain catchments to generate immediate significant sediment pulses. It would be contradictory to the above mentioned hypothesis though. Obtaining better control on sediment budgets of braided rivers like the Waimakariri River will finally add significant value to multiple scientific and applied topics like regional resource management. An essential first step of sediment budget studies Is to systematically map the geomorphology, conventionally in the field and/or using remote-sensing applications, to localise, genetically identify, and classify landforms or entire toposequences of the area being investigated. In formerly glaciated mountain environments it is also indispensable to obtain all available chronological information supporting subsequent investigations.
Background: Up to 6 years after the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes, approximately one-third of parents in the Christchurch region reported difficulties managing the continuously high levels of distress their children were experiencing. In response, an app named Kākano was co-designed with parents to help them better support their children’s mental health. Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the acceptability, feasibility, and effectiveness of Kākano, a mobile parenting app to increase parental confidence in supporting children struggling with their mental health. Methods: A cluster-randomized delayed access controlled trial was carried out in the Christchurch region between July 2019 and January 2020. Parents were recruited through schools and block randomized to receive immediate or delayed access to Kākano. Participants were given access to the Kākano app for 4 weeks and encouraged to use it weekly. Web-based pre- and postintervention measurements were undertaken. Results: A total of 231 participants enrolled in the Kākano trial, with 205 (88.7%) participants completing baseline measures and being randomized (101 in the intervention group and 104 in the delayed access control group). Of these, 41 (20%) provided full outcome data, of which 19 (18.2%) were for delayed access and 21 (20.8%) were for the immediate Kākano intervention. Among those retained in the trial, there was a significant difference in the mean change between groups favoring Kākano in the brief parenting assessment (F1,39=7, P=.012) but not in the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (F1,39=2.9, P=.099), parenting self-efficacy (F1,39=0.1, P=.805), family cohesion (F1,39=0.4, P=.538), or parenting sense of confidence (F1,40=0.6, P=.457). Waitlisted participants who completed the app after the waitlist period showed similar trends for the outcome measures with significant changes in the brief assessment of parenting and the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale. No relationship between the level of app usage and outcome was found. Although the app was designed with parents, the low rate of completion of the trial was disappointing. Conclusions: Kākano is an app co-designed with parents to help manage their children’s mental health. There was a high rate of attrition, as is often seen in digital health interventions. However, for those who did complete the intervention, there was some indication of improved parental well-being and self-assessed parenting. Preliminary indications from this trial show that Kākano has promising acceptability, feasibility, and effectiveness, but further investigation is warranted. Trial Registration: Australia New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12619001040156; https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?id=377824&isReview=true
The use of post-earthquake cordons as a tool to support emergency managers after an event has been documented around the world. However, there is limited research that attempts to understand the use, effectiveness, inherent complexities, impacts and subsequent consequences of cordoning once applied. This research aims to fill that gap by providing a detailed understanding of first, the cordons and associated processes, and their implications in a post-earthquake scenario. We use a qualitative method to understand cordons through case studies of two cities where it was used in different temporal and spatial scales: Christchurch (2011) and Wellington (Kaikōura earthquake 2016), New Zealand. Data was collected through 21 expert interviews obtained through purposive and snowball sampling of key informants who were directly or indirectly involved in a decision-making role and/or had influence in relation to the cordoning process. The participants were from varying backgrounds and roles i.e. emergency managers, council members, business representatives, insurance representatives, police and communication managers. The data was transcribed, coded in Nvivo and then grouped based on underlying themes and concepts and then analyzed inductively. It is found that cordons are used primarily as a tool to control access for the purpose of life safety and security. But cordons can also be adapted to support recovery. Broadly, it can be synthesized and viewed based on two key aspects, ‘decision-making’ and ‘operations and management’, which overlap and interact as part of a complex system. The underlying complexity arises in large part due to the multitude of sectors it transcends such as housing, socio-cultural requirements, economics, law, governance, insurance, evacuation, available resources etc. The complexity further increases as the duration of cordon is extended.
High demolition rates were observed in New Zealand after the 2010-2011 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence despite the success of modern seismic design standards to achieve required performance objectives such as life safety and collapse prevention. Approximately 60% of the multi-storey reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in the Christchurch Central Business District were demolished after these earthquakes, even when only minor structural damage was present. Several factors influenced the decision of demolition instead of repair, one of them being the uncertainty of the seismic capacity of a damaged structure. To provide more insight into this topic, the investigation conducted in this thesis evaluated the residual capacity of moderately damaged RC walls and the effectiveness of repair techniques to restore the seismic performance of heavily damaged RC walls. The research outcome provided insights for developing guidelines for post-earthquake assessment of earthquake-damaged RC structures. The methodology used to conduct the investigation was through an experimental program divided into two phases. During the first phase, two walls were subjected to different types of pre-cyclic loading to represent the damaged condition from a prior earthquake, and a third wall represented a repair scenario with the damaged wall being repaired using epoxy injection and repair mortar after the pre-cyclic loading. Comparisons of these test walls to a control undamaged wall identified significant reductions in the stiffness of the damaged walls and a partial recovery in the wall stiffness achieved following epoxy injection. Visual damage that included distributed horizontal and diagonal cracks and spalling of the cover concrete did not affect the residual strength or displacement capacity of the walls. However, evidence of buckling of the longitudinal reinforcement during the pre-cyclic loading resulted in a slight reduction in strength recovery and a significant reduction in the displacement capacity of the damaged walls. Additional experimental programs from the literature were used to provide recommendations for modelling the response of moderately damaged RC walls and to identify a threshold that represented a potential reduction in the residual strength and displacement capacity of damaged RC walls in future earthquakes. The second phase of the experimental program conducted in this thesis addressed the replacement of concrete and reinforcing steel as repair techniques for heavily damaged RC walls. Two walls were repaired by replacing the damaged concrete and using welded connections to connect new reinforcing bars with existing bars. Different locations of the welded connections were investigated in the repaired walls to study the impact of these discontinuities at the critical section. No significant changes were observed in the stiffness, strength, and displacement capacity of the repaired walls compared to the benchmark undamaged wall. Differences in the local behaviour at the critical section were observed in one of the walls but did not impact the global response. The results of these two repaired walls were combined with other experimental programs found in the literature to assemble a database of repaired RC walls. Qualitative and quantitative analyses identified trends across various parameters, including wall types, damage before repair, and repair techniques implemented. The primary outcome of the database analysis was recommendations for concrete and reinforcing steel replacement to restore the strength and displacement capacity of heavily damaged RC walls.
