Media photograph Prime Minister John Key, Opshop frontman Jason Kerrison and Student Volunteer Army Organiser Sam Johnson at an event held on campus to thank the student volunteers.
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.
An artist's impression of the installation 'Tonic', created as part of the LUXCITY event. Tutors: Annabel Pretty, Cesar Wagner, Peter McPherson
A silt castle has been built by Christchurch East that wins the competition. Context: The eastern suburbs have had a lot of problems with liquefaction following earthquakes and aftershocks. Quantity: 1 digital cartoon(s).
Site of Anglican Diocese of Christchurch. Includes news and information on the diocese, its schools and churches, diocesan events, social and social justice issues, and the cathedral rebuild process.
Information on events, weekly services, music, history and architecture, news and newsletters and current and archived sermons. Includes both pre-earthquake information, and current life of the cathedral.
Information about contemporary popular music in Christchurch, New Zealand. The Band Together event was a fund raiser for the Canterbury earthquake can be found in the 13 October 2010 archived website.
Professional and personal partners Victoria Flight and John Drew about the nutritional benefits of coconut oil, and the decision to develop their business 'Blue Coconut' after experiencing a deeply traumatic event in Christchurch's earthquake of February 2011.
A video clip showing an aerial view of CityUps - a 'city of the future for one night only', and the main event of FESTA 2014.
A video clip showing an aerial view of CityUps - a 'city of the future for one night only', and the main event of FESTA 2014.
Mayor Bob Parker, Sam Johnson, leader of the Student Volunteer Army, Prime Minister John Key and UCSA president Nick McDonnell at an event to thank the Student Volunteer Army.
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch couple Rosie Gordon (21) and Mike Bird (24) went ahead with their wedding today, despite recent earthquake events".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Christchurch couple Rosie Gordon (21) and Mike Bird (24) went ahead with their wedding today, despite recent earthquake events".
A montage of photographs of the installation 'Tonic', created as part of the LUXCITY event. Tutors: Annabel Pretty, Cesar Wagner, Peter McPherson
The public at the inaugural New Zealand Sandcastle competition held at New Brighton beach. The organisers of the Christchurch sandcastle competition hope the event will bring cheer to the earthquake-hit city.
The public at the inaugural New Zealand Sandcastle competition held at New Brighton beach. The organisers of the Christchurch sandcastle competition hope the event will bring cheer to the earthquake-hit city.
The public at the inaugural New Zealand Sandcastle competition held at New Brighton beach. The organisers of the Christchurch sandcastle competition hope the event will bring cheer to the earthquake-hit city.
A video clip of the Excuse My French Crepe cart at CityUps - a 'city of the future for one night only', and the main event of FESTA 2014.
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On Tuesday 22 February 2011, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city. The ‘earthquake’ was in fact an aftershock to an earlier 7.1 magnitude earthquake that had occurred on Saturday 4 September 2010. There were a number of key differences between the two events that meant they had dramatically different results for Christchurch and its inhabitants. The 22 February 2011 event resulted in one of New Zealand’s worst natural disasters on record, with 185 fatalities occurring and hundreds more being injured. In addition, a large number of buildings either collapsed or were damaged to the point where they needed to be totally demolished. Since the initial earthquake in September 2010, a large amount of building-related research has been initiated in New Zealand to investigate the impact of the series of seismic events – the major focus of these research projects has been on seismic, structural and geotechnical engineering matters. One project, however, conducted jointly by the University of Canterbury, the Fire Protection Association of New Zealand and BRANZ, has focused on the performance of fire protection systems in the earthquakes and the effectiveness of the systems in the event of post-earthquake fires occurring. Fortunately, very few fires actually broke out following the series of earthquake events in Christchurch, but fire after earthquakes still has significant implications for the built environment in New Zealand, and the collaborative research has provided some invaluable insight into the potential threat posed by post-earthquake fires in buildings. As well as summarising the damage caused to fire protection systems, this paper discusses the flow-on effect for designing structures to withstand post-earthquake fires. One of the underlying issues that will be explored is the existing regulatory framework in New Zealand whereby structural earthquake design and structural design for fire are treated as discrete design scenarios.
This study provides an initial examination of source parameter uncertainty in a New Zealand ground motion simulation model, by simulating multiple event realisations with perturbed source parameters. Small magnitude events in Canterbury have been selected for this study due to the small number of source input parameters, the wealth of recorded data, and the lack of appreciable off-fault non-linear effects. Which provides greater opportunity to identify systematic source, path and site effects, required to robustly investigate the causes of uncertainty.
A photograph of a band playing to a crowd of students outside the UCSA building during the 2008 end-of-year Tea Party event.
A photograph of a band playing to a crowd of students outside the UCSA building during the 2008 end-of-year Tea Party event.
A photograph of a band playing to a crowd of students outside the UCSA building during the 2008 end-of-year Tea Party event.
The Beca Heritage Festival 2019 is currently on in Christchurch. There’s lots of interesting events being held, highlighting both the work being done in the heritage sector in Christchurch and providing opportunities to visit and interact with Christchurch’s heritage (see … Continue reading →
A video clip of young people playing volleyball on Manchester Street during CityUps. CityUps was a 'city of the future for one night only', and the main event of FESTA 2014.
The new Wellington Venues Limited CEO discusses her ideas for the events scene in the capital, plus the addition of a new Christchurch Artists exhibition in the St James Theatre, which will raise money for artists affected by the earthquake
Ceramics have been decorated to commemorate a range of events, people and places since long before the 19th century. The practice is particularly tied to British royalty, with some rather intense results. While tankards, jugs, plaques, mugs and miniature wares … Continue reading →
A video clip of a vintage market on Manchester Street. The market was part of CityUps - a 'city of the future for one night only', and the main event of FESTA 2014.
A video clip of several large-scale installations which are part of CityUps. CityUps was a 'city of the future for one night only', and the main event of FESTA 2014.