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Videos, UC QuakeStudies

A video of a tour of the Christchurch central city Red Zone. The video shows footage of the Edmond's Band Rotunda, Gloucester Street, the CTV building site, Poplar Lane, the McKenzie & Willis building, High Street, Lichfield Street, Colombo Street, Cathedral Square, and ChristChurch Cathedral.

Videos, UC QuakeStudies

A video of Press journalist Martin Van Beynen talking about the Canterbury Television Building which collapsed during the 22 February 2011 earthquake. Beynen investigates the construction manager of the building, Gerald Shirtcliff, who allegedly faked an engineering degree and stole the identity of an engineer he knew in South Africa. The video also includes footage of Shirtcliff giving evidence about the CTV Building at the Canterbury Earthquake Royal Commission.

Research Papers, Lincoln University

Though there is a broad consensus that communities play a key role in disaster response and recovery, most of the existing work in this area focuses on the activities of donor agencies, formal civil defence authorities, and local/central government. Consequently, there is a paucity of research addressing the on-going actions and activities undertaken by communities and ‘emergent groups’ , particularly as they develop after the immediate civil defence or ‘response’ phase is over. In an attempt to address this gap, this inventory of community-led recovery initiatives was undertaken approximately one year after the most devastating February 2011 earthquake. It is part of on-going project at Lincoln University documenting – and seeking a better understanding of - various emergent communities’ roles in recovery, their challenges, and strategies for overcoming them. This larger project also seeks to better understand how collaborative work between informal and formal recovery efforts might be facilitated at different stages of the process. This inventory was conducted over the December 2011 – February 2012 period and builds on Landcare Research’s Christchurch Earthquake Activity Inventory which was a similar snapshot taken in April 2011. The intention behind conducting this updated inventory is to gain a longitudinal perspective of how community-led recovery activities evolve over time. Each entry is ordered alphabetically and contact details have been provided where possible. A series of keywords have also been assigned that describe the main attributes of each activity to assist searches within this document.This inventory was supported by the Lincoln University Research Fund and the Royal Society Marsden Fund.

Research Papers, Lincoln University

The recent Christchurch earthquakes provide a unique opportunity to better understand the relationship between pre-disaster social fault-lines and post-disaster community fracture. As a resident of Christchurch, this paper presents some of my reflections on the social structures and systems, activities, attitudes and decisions that have helped different Canterbury ‘communities’ along their road to recovery, and highlights some issues that have, unfortunately, held us back. These reflections help answer the most crucial question asked of disaster scholarship: what can recovery agencies (including local authorities) do - both before and after disaster - to promote resilience and facilitate recovery. This paper – based on three different definitions of resilience - presents a thematic account of the social recovery landscape. I argue that ‘coping’ might best be associated with adaptive capacity, however ‘thriving’ or ‘bounce forward’ versions of resilience are a function of a community’s participative capacity.

Research Papers, Lincoln University

4th September 2010 a 7.1 magnitude earthquake strikes near Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city of approximately 370,000 people. This is followed by a 6.3 magnitude quake on 22nd February 2011 and a 6.4 on 13th June. In February 181 people died and a state of national emergency was declared from 23 February to 30th April. Urban Search and Rescue teams with 150 personnel from New Zealand and 429 from overseas worked tirelessly in addition to Army, Police and Fire services. Within the central business district 1,000 buildings (of 4,000) are expected to be demolished. An estimated 10,000 houses require demolition and over 100,000 were damaged. Meanwhile the over 7,000 aftershocks have become part of the “new normal” for us all. During this time how have libraries supported their staff? What changes have been made to services? What are the resourcing opportunities? This presentation will provide a personal view from Lincoln University, Te Whare Wanaka o Aoraki, Library Teaching and Learning. Lincoln is New Zealand's third oldest university having been founded in 1878. Publicly owned and operated it is New Zealand's specialist land-based university. Lincoln is based on the Canterbury Plains, 22 kilometres south of Christchurch. On campus there was mostly minor damage to buildings while in the Library 200,000 volumes were thrown from the shelves. I will focus on the experiences of the Disaster Team and on our experiences with hosting temporarily displaced staff and students from the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, Library, Learning & Information Services. Experiences from two other institutions will be highlighted: Christchurch City Libraries, Ngā Kete Wānanga-o-Ōtautahi. Focusing on the Māori Services Team and the Ngā Pounamu Māori and Ngāi Tahu collections. The Central library located within the red zone cordon has been closed since February, the Central library held the Ngā Pounamu Māori and Ngai Tahu collections, the largest Māori collections in the Christchurch public library network. The lack of access to these collections changed the way the Māori Services Team, part of the larger Programmes, Events and Learning Team at Christchurch City Libraries were able to provide services to their community resulting in new innovative outreach programmes and a focus on promotion of online resources. On 19th December the “temporary” new and smaller Central library Peterborough opened. The retrieved Ngā Pounamu Māori and Ngai Tahu collections "Ngā rakau teitei e iwa”, have since been re-housed and are once again available for use by the public. Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu. This organisation, established by the Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu Act 1996, services the statutory rights for the people of Ngāi Tahu descent and ensures that the benefits of their Treaty Claim Settlement are enjoyed by Ngāi Tahu now and in the future. Ngāi Tahu are the indigenous Māori people of the southern islands of New Zealand - Te Waipounamu. The iwi (people) hold the rangatiratanga or tribal authority to over 80 per cent of the South Island. With their headquarters based in the central business they have also had to be relocated to temporary facilities. This included their library/archive collection of print resources, art works and taonga (cultural treasures).

Research Papers, Lincoln University

An emerging water crisis is on the horizon and is poised to converge with several other impending problems in the 21st century. Future uncertainties such as climate change, peak oil and peak water are shifting the international focus from a business as usual approach to an emphasis on sustainable and resilient strategies that better meet these challenges. Cities are being reimagined in new ways that take a multidisciplinary approach, decompartmentalising functions and exploring ways in which urban systems can share resources and operate more like natural organisms. This study tested the landscape design implications of wastewater wetlands in the urban environment and evaluated their contribution to environmental sustainability, urban resilience and social development. Black and grey water streams were the central focus of this study and two types of wastewater wetlands, tidal flow (staged planning) and horizontal subsurface flow wetlands were tested through design investigations in the earthquake-affected city of Christchurch, New Zealand. These investigations found that the large area requirements of wastewater wetlands can be mitigated through landscape designs that enhance a matrix of open spaces and corridors in the city. Wastewater wetlands when combined with other urban and rural services such as food production, energy generation and irrigation can aid in making communities more resilient. Landscape theory suggests that the design of wastewater wetlands must meet cultural thresholds of beauty and that the inclusion of waste and ecologies in creatively designed landscapes can deepen our emotional connection to nature and ourselves.