A new Bill looks to make life easier for people affected by major disasters, following the human disaster created by shortcomings of the Earthquake Commission in its response to the Christchurch earthquakes.
South Library is the last of the council's libraries to be rebuilt or repaired following the Canterbury earthquakes.
One of New Zealand's most celebrated authors, Kate De Goldi's short fiction, novels and picture books engage children, teenagers and adults alike. Novel The 10pm Question was published to critical acclaim, quickly becoming an iconic piece of New Zealand literature. Her latest, Eddy, Eddy is being met with similar excitement.
It's more than a decade since the Canterbury earthquakes, but how far has the Christchurch rebuild come?
"There's still a lot of holes and a lot of carparks."
A remote-operated digger has started work on Christchurch Cathedral removing rubble from the historic building. It's a job project managers are describing as a world first - and a significant breakthrough in the clean up of Christchurch's earthquake damaged Cathedral. Adam Burns reports.
The Ōtakaro-Avon and Ōpāwaho-Heathcote in Christchurch are some of the most polluted in the region. While the Avon has received a lot of attention since the Canterbury Earthquakes with $100 million going into a new promenade and cleaning up its water quality, it's a different story for the Heathcote River where raw sewage and industrial chemicals are still regularly found. Niva Chittock reports.
The world's first remote-operated digger will enter and undertake internal cleanup inside Christchurch's iconic Cathedral.
Today marks the end of an 11-year dry spell for the Garden City.
Mention the words "earthquake" in the same brief as "remediation" and it's enough to strike fear in the hearts of all New Zealanders, particularly those in Christchurch and other earthquake prone areas of the country. Now we find the chances of the ground shaking more violently in a quake is much higher than previously thought for large parts of the country. In some places it has doubled or even trebled. What are the ramifications of this new found knowledge? Joining the show to discuss is Michelle Grant, President of the Structural Engineering Society New Zealand, and Matt Gerstenberger, Principal Scientist and Seismologist at GNS Science
The city still has big swathes of empty land after the earthquakes - but critics say fast-forwarding development is the wrong approach.
This thesis investigates life-safety risk in earthquakes. The first component of the thesis utilises a dataset of earthquake injuries and deaths from recent earthquakes in New Zealand to identify cause, context, and risk factors of injury and death in the 2011 MW6.3 Christchurch earthquake and 2016 MW7.8 Kaikōura earthquake. Results show that nearly all deaths occurred from being hit by structural elements from buildings, while most injuries were caused by falls, strains and being hit by contents or non-structural elements. Statistical analysis of injured cases compared to an uninjured control group found that age, gender, building damage, shaking intensity, and behaviour during shaking were the most significant risk factors for injury during these earthquakes. The second part of the thesis uses the empirical findings from the first section to develop two tools for managing life-safety risk in earthquakes. The first tool is a casualty estimation model for health system and emergency response planning. An existing casualty model used in New Zealand was validated against observed data from the 2011 Christchurch earthquake and found to underestimate moderate and severe injuries by an order of magnitude. The model was then updated to include human behaviour such as protective actions, falls and strain type injuries that are dependent on shaking intensity, as well as injuries and deaths outside buildings. These improvements resulted in a closer fit to observed casualties for the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. The second tool that was developed is a framework to set seismic loading standards for design based on fatality risk targets. The proposed framework extends the risk-targeted hazard method, by moving beyond collapse risk targets, to fatality risk targets for individuals in buildings and societal risk in cities. The framework also includes treatment of epistemic uncertainty in seismic hazard to allow this uncertainty to be used in risk-based decision making. The framework is demonstrated by showing how the current New Zealand loading standards could be revised to achieve uniform life-safety risk across the country and how the introduction of a new loading factor can reduce risk aggregation in cities. Not on Alma, moved and emailed. 1/02/2023 ce
It's hoped a new art installation in Ōtautahi Christchurch can help people talk their worries away through a series of telephones by the riverside. Twelve telephones have popped up across sites commemorating the city's devastating 2011 earthquakes. The group behind the project is Flourish Kia Puawai. Its associate director Sharon Torstonson spoke to Corin Dann.
Four years ago Christchurch City Council vowed to get tough on the owners of 30 central city buildings left derelict since the 2011 earthquake. A wander through central Christchurch shows many of the buildings, nicknamed the dirty 30, still look unchanged. There are boarded up windows, tarps covering gaping holes, and containers keeping bricks from falling on passers by. But council says progress is finally being made on most Rachel Graham has more.
Having moved to Joshua Tree after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, husband-and-wife duo Maryrose and Brian Crook are back on home soil for a string of shows with their swirling psychedelic-rock act The Renderers.
Christchurch has a big bill to contend with, if it still wants the multi-use stadium that's been in the works since the earthquakes 11 years ago. The problem-plagued project has blown out another $150 million, meaning it's going to cost $680 million and counting. The finish date's been pushed out too - to April 2026. Christchurch City Council's punting the hefty decision making back to the ratepayers. The options - increase the budget, scale back the project, or halt work altogether. Tessa Guest reports, and Crusaders CEO Colin Mansbridge talks to Lisa Owen.
This thesis presents an assessment of historic seismic performance of the New Zealand stopbank network from the 1968 Inangahua earthquake through to the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake. An overview of the types of stopbanks and the main aspects of the design and construction of earthen stopbanks was presented. Stopbanks are structures that are widely used on the banks of rivers and other water bodies to protect against the impact of flood events. Earthen stopbanks are found to be the most used for such protection measures. Different stopbank damage or failure modes that may occur due to flooding or earthquake excitation were assessed with a focus on past earthquakes internationally, and examples of these damage and failure modes were presented. Stopbank damage and assessment reports were collated from available reconnaissance literature to develop the first geospatial database of stopbank damage observed in past earthquakes in New Zealand. Damage was observed in four earthquakes over the past 50 years, with a number of earthquakes resulting in no stopbank damage. The damage database therefore focussed on the Edgecumbe, Darfield, Christchurch and Kaikōura earthquakes. Cracking of the crest and liquefaction-induced settlement were the most common forms of damage observed. To understand the seismic demand on the stopbank network in past earthquakes, geospatial analyses were undertaken to approximate the peak ground acceleration (PGA) across the stopbank network for ten large earthquakes that have occurred in New Zealand over the past 50 years. The relationship between the demand, represented by the peak ground acceleration (PGA) and damage is discussed and key trends identified. Comparison of the seismic demand and the distribution of damage suggested that the seismic performance of the New Zealand stopbank network has been generally good across all events considered. Although a significant length of the stopbank networks were exposed to high levels of shaking in past events, the overall damage length was a small percentage of this. The key aspect controlling performance was the performance of the underlying foundation soils and the effect of this on the stopbank structure and stability.
It was so nearly lost. As the Christ Church Anglican Cathedral is being rebuilt, historian Edmund Bohan is releasing a history of the distinctive Gothic building. It shows it was controversial even before work started on designing it, let alone building in. From the laying of the foundations to the official opening, it took 40 years, after squabbles over pretty much every aspect of its construction - not to mention the huge problems raising the money to build it in the City Centre. In Heart of the City: The Story of Christchurch's Controversial Cathedral, Edmund is critical of the former Anglican Bishop Victoria Matthews' determination to demolish the badly-damaged cathedral after the Canterbury earthquakes, to replace it with a modern church. And he tells Lynn Freeman he's very much looking forward to seeing the Cathedral restored to its former glory after a lengthy and pricey rebuild. But first he sets the scene. Back in the 1860s, there was controversy over where the cathedral should go, its design, whether it should be in stone or timber - even if there should be a cathedral built at all! Heart of the City: The Story of Christchurch's Controversial Cathedral, by Edmund Bohan is published by Quentin Wilson Publishing.
Nine to Noon continues to look at who's in the running to head up our biggest cities after local elections in October, with a focus today on the 11 candidates vying to be mayor of Christchurch. Three-term mayor Lianne Dalziel announced last July she'd be stepping down as mayor, having overseen nearly a decade's worth of the city's rebuild following the devastating earthquakes. The two major contenders for the role are Burwood city councillor Phil Mauger and former Canterbury District Health Board chief executive David Meates. Other contenders include the city's Wizard, a coffee boss, pro-gun pastor and a candidate who's stood in every election since 1971. For more, Kathryn is joined by David Williams, the South Island correspondent for Newsroom.co.nz.
Ravenscar House Museum holds an extraordinary, previously private art collection. The new building has been gifted to Christchurch by art collectors Susan Wakefield and her late husband Jim. The art remains in the ownership of the Ravenscar Trust. Artists in the collection include Colin McCahon, Bill Sutton and Frances Hodgkins. The treasures were previously in the Wakefield's Christchurch home which suffered irreparable earthquake damage. They're now displayed in the purpose-designed and built Ravenscar House Museum in the city's Arts precinct. The story of the art and artefacts is told in in the book - Ravenscar House: A Biography, written by Christchurch journalist and writer Sally Blundell.
The much loved 'Dux de Lux' pub in Christchurch could be set to open its doors again in the next few years if enough money can be raised to restore it. The building was badly damaged by the earthquake in 2011 and a group looking to rebuild the pub say it could take around 12 million dollars to see it welcoming Cantabrians back. James Stewart of Gemelli Consulting had a yarn with Nathan Rarere about a couple of schemes to raise the money.
The Governors Bay community weren't going to accept a Christchurch council decision to close the 140 year old jetty following earthquake damage in 2011. Nick Harwood's part of the group and handily a geotechnical engineer.
There's been a huge outpouring of emotion in Australia at the death of cricketing legend Shane Warne, aged 52, while he was on a holiday in Thailand. Comedian, Ben Hurley, talks to Jesse about meeting him at a Christchurch earthquake charity match in 2011.
Many areas of Christchurch are underwater, dealing with what's been described as the worst flooding since the earthquakes. The high tide has just passed, with the rivers already running across roads and flooding into some homes. Schools have been closed, businesses inundated and dozens of roads around the city, closed. Already more than 70mm of rain has fallen in the past 24 hours, making it the city's wettest July on record. Now as the bad weather moves south the army has been put on standby in Dunedin for the expected deluge there. RNZ reporters Niva Chittock, Adam Burns and cameraman Nathan McKinnon are in Christchurch with the details.
On 22 February 2011, Ōtautahi Christchurch was struck by a devastating earthquake. The city was changed forever: lives were lost, buildings destroyed and much of the city’s infrastructure needed to be repaired or replaced. One of the unexpected outcomes of the process of recovery was the volume of archaeological work that was carried out in the city, including the substantial amount of buildings archaeology that was undertaken (that is, recording standing buildings prior to and during their demolition, using archaeological techniques). Amongst the numerous buildings recorded in this way were 101 houses from across the city (but concentrated in those areas hit hardest by the earthquakes), built between 1850 and 1900. This work yielded a wealth of data about what houses in the city looked like in the nineteenth century. It is this data that forms the core of my thesis, providing an opportunity to examine the question of what life was like in nineteenth century Christchurch through these houses and the people who built them. Christchurch was founded in 1850 by European settlers, most of whom were English. These people came to New Zealand to build a better life for themselves and their families. For many of them, this ‘better life’ included the possibility of owning their own home and, in some instances, building that house (or at least, commissioning its construction). The buildings archaeology data collected following the Canterbury earthquakes enabled a detailed analysis of what houses in the city looked like in the nineteenth century – their form, and both their external and internal appearance – and how this changed as the century progressed. A detailed examination of the lives of those who built 21 of the houses enabled me to understand why each house looked the way it did, and how the interplay of class, budget and family size and expectations (amongst other factors) shaped each house. It is through these life stories that more about life in Christchurch in the nineteenth century was revealed. These are stories of men and women, of success and failure, of businesses and bankruptcies. There are themes that run through the stories: class, appearances, death, religion, gender, improvement. Just as importantly, though, they reveal the everyday experiences of people as they set about building a new city. Thus, through the archaeology of the houses and the history of the people who built them, an earthquake has revealed more about life in nineteenth century Christchurch, as well as providing the means for a deeper understanding of the city’s domestic architecture.
In this week’s programme we’re featuring evening hymns, and you can hear a setting of Psalm 23 – it’ll be the third in our series so far. We’re also commemorating the Feast Day of German theologian Martin Luther, and the 11th anniversary of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake.
Rapid, reliable information on earthquake-affected structures' current damage/health conditions and predicting what would happen to these structures under future seismic events play a vital role in accelerating post-event evaluations, leading to optimized on-time decisions. Such rapid and informative post-event evaluations are crucial for earthquake-prone areas, where each earthquake can potentially trigger a series of significant aftershocks, endangering the community's health and wealth by further damaging the already-affected structures. Such reliable post-earthquake evaluations can provide information to decide whether an affected structure is safe to stay in operation, thus saving many lives. Furthermore, they can lead to more optimal recovery plans, thus saving costs and time. The inherent deficiency of visual-based post-earthquake evaluations and the importance of structural health monitoring (SHM) methods and SHM instrumentation have been highlighted within this thesis, using two earthquake-affected structures in New Zealand: 1) the Canterbury Television (CTV) building, Christchurch; 2) the Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) building, Wellington. For the first time, this thesis verifies the theoretically- and experimentally validated hysteresis loop analysis (HLA) SHM method for the real-world instrumented structure of the BNZ building, which was damaged severely due to three earthquakes. Results indicate the HLA-SHM method can accurately estimate elastic stiffness degradation for this reinforced concrete (RC) pinched structure across the three earthquakes, which remained unseen until after the third seismic event. Furthermore, the HLA results help investigate the pinching effects on the BNZ building's seismic response. This thesis introduces a novel digital clone modelling method based on the robust and accurate SHM results delivered by the HLA method for physical parameters of the monitored structure and basis functions predicting the changes of these physical parameters due to future earthquake excitations. Contrary to artificial intelligence (AI) based predictive methods with black-box designs, the proposed predictive method is entirely mechanics-based with an explicitly-understandable design, making them more trusted and explicable to stakeholders engaging in post-earthquake evaluations, such as building owners and insurance firms. The proposed digital clone modelling framework is validated using the BNZ building and an experimental RC test structure damaged severely due to three successive shake-table excitations. In both structures, structural damage intensifies the pinching effects in hysteresis responses. Results show the basis functions identified from the HLA-SHM results for both structures under Event 1 can online estimate structural damage due to subsequent Events 2-3 from the measured structural responses, making them valuable tool for rapid warning systems. Moreover, the digital twins derived for these two structures under Event 1 can successfully predict structural responses and damage under Events 2-3, which can be integrated with the incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) method to assess structural collapse and its financial risks. Furthermore, it enables multi-step IDA to evaluate earthquake series' impacts on structures. Overall, this thesis develops an efficient method for providing reliable information on earthquake-affected structures' current and future status during or immediately after an earthquake, considerably guaranteeing safety. Significant validation is implemented against both experimental and real data of RC structures, which thus clearly indicate the accurate predictive performance of this HLA-based method.
The skills agenda has grown in prominence within the construction industry. Indeed, skill shortages have been recognised as a perennial problem the construction industry faces, especially after a major disaster. In the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes, small and medium construction companies were at the forefront of rebuilding efforts. While the survival of these companies was seen to be paramount, and extreme events were seen to be a threat to survival, there is a dearth of research centring on their resourcing capacity following a disaster. This research aims to develop workforce resourcing best practice guidelines for subcontractors in response to large disaster reconstruction demands. By using case study methods, this research identified the challenges faced by subcontracting businesses in resourcing Christchurch recovery projects; identified the workforce resourcing strategies adopted by subcontracting businesses in response to reconstruction demand; and developed a best practice guideline for subcontracting businesses in managing the workforce at the organisational and/or project level. This research offers a twofold contribution. First, it provides an overview of workforce resourcing practices in subcontracting businesses. This understanding has enabled the development of a more practical workforce resourcing guideline for subcontractors. Second, it promotes evidence-informed decision-making in subcontractors’ workforce resourcing. Dynamics in workforce resourcing and their multifaceted interactions were explicitly depicted in this research. More importantly, this research provides a framework to guide policy development in producing a sustainable solution to skill shortages and establishing longterm national skill development initiatives. Taken together, this research derives a research agenda that maps under-explored areas relevant for further elaboration and future research. Prospective researchers can use the research results in identifying gaps and priority areas in relation to workforce resourcing.
In the last two decades, the retail sector has experienced unprecedented upheaval, having severe implications for economic development and sustenance of traditional inner-city retail districts. In the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, this effect has been exacerbated by a series of earthquakes in 2010/2011 which destroyed much of the traditional retail precinct of the city. After extensive rebuild activity of the city’s infrastructure, the momentum of retailers returning to the inner city was initially sluggish but eventually gathered speed supported by increased international visitation. In early 2020, the return to retail normality came to an abrupt halt after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study uses spending and transaction data to analyze the compounding impact of the earthquake’s aftermath, shift to online shopping, and the retail disruption in the Christchurch central retail precinct because of COVID-19. The findings illustrate how consumers through their spending respond to different types of external shocks, altering their consumption patterns and retail mode (offline and online) to cope with an ever-changing retail landscape. Each event triggers different spending patterns that have some similarities but also stark differences, having implications for a sustainable and resilient retail industry in Christchurch. Implications for urban retail precinct development are also discussed.
<b>New Zealand has experienced several strong earthquakes in its history. While an earthquake cannot be prevented from occurring, planning can reduce its consequences when it does occur. This dissertation research examines various aspects of disaster risk management policy in Aotearoa New Zealand.</b> Chapter 2 develops a method to rank and prioritise high-rise buildings for seismic retrofitting in Wellington, the earthquake-prone capital city of New Zealand. These buildings pose risks to Wellington’s long-term seismic resilience that are of clear concern to current and future policymakers. The prioritization strategy we propose, based on multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods, considers a variety of data on each building, including not only its structural characteristics, but also its location, its economic value to the city, and its social importance to the community around it. The study demonstrates how different measures, within four general criteria – life safety, geo-spatial location of the building, its economic role, and its socio-cultural role – can be operationalized into a viable framework for determining retrofitting/demolition policy priorities. Chapter 3 and chapter 4 analyse the Residential Red Zone (RRR) program that was implemented in Christchurch after the 2011 earthquake. In the program, approximately 8,000 homeowners were told that their homes were no longer permittable, and they were bought by the government (through the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority). Chapter 3 examines the subjective wellbeing of the RRR residents (around 16000 people) after they were forced to move. We consider three indicators of subjective wellbeing: quality of life, stress, and emotional wellbeing. We found that demographic factors, health conditions, and the type of government compensation the residents accepted, were all significant determinants of the wellbeing of the Red Zone residents. More social relations, better financial circumstances, and the perception of better government communication were also all associated positively with a higher quality of life, less stress, and higher emotional wellbeing. Chapter 4 concentrates on the impact of this managed retreat program on RRR residents’ income. We use individual-level comprehensive, administrative, panel data from Canterbury, and difference in difference evaluation method to explore the effects of displacement on Red Zone residential residents. We found that compared to non-relocated neighbours, the displaced people experience a significant initial decrease in their wages and salaries, and their total income. The impacts vary with time spent in the Red Zone and when they moved away. Wages and salaries of those who were red-zoned and moved in 2011 were reduced by 8%, and 5.4% for those who moved in 2012. Females faced greater decreases in wages and salaries, and total income, than males. There were no discernible impacts of the relocation on people’s self-employment income.