Search

found 153507 results

Images for [empty query]; more images...

Articles, Lost Christchurch

Charismatic, athletic and intelligent, Jonathan Roberts came from a respectable family. A native of Cornwall, he immigrated to New Zealand with his family as a small child in 1862. After leaving sc…

Articles, Lost Christchurch

From 1919 until 1963, New Zealand audiences were guaranteed ‘snappy scenes, bright singing, excellent dancing and sparkling comedy’ when attending a Stan Lawson Production.

Research papers, Victoria University of Wellington

This paper begins with a discussion of the history of negligent manslaughter in New Zealand and its development from the standard of ordinary negligence to the current test of a “major departure” from the expected standard of care, as set out under s 150A of the Crimes Act 1961. The paper then examines failings in s 150A’s current application, arguing that the “major departure” test has created injustices due to its strictly objective nature. Two examples of this are discussed in-depth, Bawa-Garba v R (UK) where a doctor was convicted of grossly negligent manslaughter for the death of her patient; and the decision not to prosecute the negligent engineers of the CTV building which collapsed in the Christchurch earthquake of 2011. The paper discusses three potential resolutions moving forward. It concludes that a more subjective interpretation of the wording of s 150A, which takes account of circumstances excusing or condemning a defendant’s conduct, would prevent future injustices and be a reasonably open interpretation on the wording of s 150A.

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, University of Canterbury Library

It is not a matter of if a major earthquake will happen in New Zealand, it is when. Earthquakes wreak havoc, cut off power and water supply, lines of communication, sewer, supply chains, and transport infrastructure. People get injured and whole communities can get cut off the rest of the country for extended periods of time. Countries taking measures to increase the population's preparedness tend to suffer less severe consequences than those that do not. Disaster management authorities deliver comprehensive instructions and preparation guidance, yet communities remain grossly underprepared. There are multiple factors that influence motivation for preparedness. Personal experience is one of the most significant factors that influence preparedness motivation. Not many people will experience a severe and damaging earthquake in their lifetime. A serious game (SG) that is a computer simulation of an earthquake is a tool that can let participants experience the earthquake and its aftermath from the safety of their computer. The main result of this research is a positive answer to the question: Can a serious game motivate people to prepare for earthquakes at least just as good as a personal experience of at least a moderate earthquake? There are different levels of immersion this serious game can be implemented at. In this thesis the same earthquake experience scenario – SG “ShakeUp” is implemented as a desktop application and a virtual reality (VR) application. A user study is conducted with the aim of comparing the motivation level achieved by the two versions of the SG “ShakeUp”. In this study no benefits of using VR over traditional desktop application were found: participants trying both versions of the SG “ShakeUp” reported similar levels of motivation to prepare for earthquakes immediately after the experiment. This means that both versions of the experience were equally effective in motivating participants to prepare for earthquakes. An additional benefit of this result is that the cheaper and easier to deliver desktop version can be widely used in various education campaigns. Participants reported being more motivated to prepare for earthquakes by either version of the SG “ShakeUp” than by any other contributing factor, including their previous earthquake experience or participation in a public education campaign. Both versions of the SG “ShakeUp” can successfully overcome personal bias, unrealistic optimism, pessimism, lack of perceived control over one’s earthquake preparation actions, fatalism, and sense of helplessness in the face of the earthquakes and motivate the individual to prepare for earthquakes. Participants without the prior earthquake experience benefit most from the SG “ShakeUp” regardless of the version tried, compared to the participants who had experienced an earthquake: significantly more of them will reconsider their current level of earthquake preparedness; about 24% more of them attribute their increased level of motivation to prepare for earthquakes to the SG “ShakeUp”. For every earthquake preparation action there is about 25% more people who felt motivated to do it after trying the SG “ShakeUp” than those who have done this preparation action before the experiment. After trying either version of the SG “ShakeUp”, people who live in a free standing house and those who live in a rental property reported highest levels of intent to carry on with the preparation actions. The proposed application prototype has been discussed with the University of Canterbury Earthquake Centre and received very positive feedback as having potential for practical use by various disaster management authorities and training institutions. The research shows that the SG “ShakeUp” motivates people to prepare for earthquakes as good as a personal earthquake experience and can be successfully used in various education campaigns.

Research papers, Victoria University of Wellington

The standard way in which disaster damages are measured involves examining separately the number of fatalities, of injuries, of people otherwise affected, and the financial damage that natural disasters cause. Here, we implement a novel way to aggregate these separate measures of disaster impact and apply it to two recent catastrophic events: the Christchurch (New Zealand) earthquakes and the Greater Bangkok (Thailand) floods of 2011. This new measure, which is similar to the World Health Organization’s calculation of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) lost from the burden of diseases and injuries, is described in detail in Noy (2014). It allows us to conclude that New Zealand lost 180 thousand lifeyears as a result of the 2011 events, and Thailand lost 2,644 thousand years. In per capita terms, the loss is similar, with both countries losing about 15 days per person due to the 2011 catastrophic events in these two countries. We also compare these events to other potentially similar events.

Research papers, Victoria University of Wellington

We examine the role of business interruption insurance in business recovery following the Christchurch earthquake in 2011 in the short- and medium-term. In the short-term analysis, we ask whether insurance increases the likelihood of business survival in the aftermath of a disaster. We find only weak evidence that those firms that had incurred damage, but were covered by business interruption insurance, had higher likelihood of survival post-quake compared with those firms that did not have insurance. This absence of evidence may reflect the high degree of uncertainty in the months following the 2011 earthquake and the multiplicity of severe aftershocks. For the medium-term, our results show a more explicit role for insurance in the aftermath of a disaster. Firms with business interruption insurance have a higher probability of increasing productivity and improved performance following a catastrophe. Furthermore, our results show that those organisations that receive prompt and full payments of their claims have a better recovery, in terms of profitability and a subjective ‘”better off” measure’ than those that had protracted or inadequate claim payments (less than 80% of the claim paid within 2.5 years). Interestingly, the latter group does worse than those organisations that had damage but no insurance coverage. This analysis strongly indicates the importance not only of good insurance coverage, but of an insurance system that also delivers prompt claim payments. As a first paper attempting to empirically identify a causal effect of insurance on business recovery, we also emphasize some caveats to our analysis.

Research papers, Victoria University of Wellington

Earthquakes are insured only with public sector involvement in high-income countries where the risk of earthquakes is perceived to be high. The proto-typical examples of this public sector involvement are the public earthquake insurance schemes in California, Japan, and New Zealand (NZ). Each of these insurance programs is structured differently, and the purpose of this paper is to examine these differences using a concrete case-study, the sequence of earthquakes that occurred in the Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2011. This event turned out to have been the most heavily insured earthquake event in history. We examine what would have been the outcome of the earthquakes had the system of insurance in NZ been different. In particular, we focus on the public earthquake insurance programs in California (the California Earthquake Authority - CEA), and in Japan (Japanese Earthquake Reinsurance - JER). Overall, the aggregate cost to the public insurer in NZ was $NZ 11.1 billion in its response to the earthquakes. If a similar-sized disaster event had occurred in Japan and California, homeowners would have received $NZ 2.5 billion and $NZ 1.4 billion from the JER and CEA, respectively. We further describe the spatial and distributive patterns of these different scenarios.

Research papers, Victoria University of Wellington

We measure the longer-term effect of a major earthquake on the local economy, using night-time light intensity measured from space, and investigate whether insurance claim payments for damaged residential property affected the local recovery process. We focus on the destructive Christchurch earthquake of 2011 as our case study. In this event more than 95% of residential housing units were covered by insurance, but insurance payments were staggered over 5 years, enabling us to identify their local impact. We find that night-time luminosity can capture the process of recovery and describe the recovery’s determinants. We also find that insurance payments contributed significantly to the process of economic recovery after the earthquake, but delayed payments were less affective and cash settlement of claims were more affective in contributing to local recovery than insurance-managed rebuilding.

Research papers, Victoria University of Wellington

We estimate the causal effects of a large unanticipated natural disaster on high schoolers’ university enrolment decisions and subsequent medium-term labour market outcomes. Using national administrative data after a destructive earthquake in New Zealand, we estimate that the disaster raises tertiary education enrolment of recent high school graduates by 6.1 percentage points. The effects are most pronounced for males, students who are academically weak relative to their peers, and students from schools directly damaged by the disaster. As relatively low ability males are overrepresented in sectors of the labour market helped by the earthquake, greater demand for university may stem from permanent changes in deeper behavioural parameters such as risk aversion or time preference, rather than as a coping response to poor economic opportunities.