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Research Papers, Lincoln University

Study region: Christchurch, New Zealand. Study focus: Low-lying coastal cities worldwide are vulnerable to shallow groundwater salinization caused by saltwater intrusion and anthropogenic activities. Shallow groundwater salinization can have cascading negative impacts on municipal assets, but this is rarely considered compared to impacts of salinization on water supply. Here, shallow groundwater salinity was sampled at high spatial resolution (1.3 piezometer/km²), then mapped and spatially interpolated. This was possible due to a uniquely extensive set of shallow piezometers installed in response to the 2010–11 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence to assess liquefaction risk. The municipal assets located within the brackish groundwater areas were highlighted. New hydrological insights for the region: Brackish groundwater areas were centred on a spit of coastal sand dunes and inside the meander of a tidal river with poorly drained soils. The municipal assets located within these areas include: (i) wastewater and stormwater pipes constructed from steel-reinforced concrete, which, if damaged, are vulnerable to premature failure when exposed to chloride underwater, and (ii) 41 parks and reserves totalling 236 ha, within which salt-intolerant groundwater-dependent species are at risk. This research highlights the importance of determining areas of saline shallow groundwater in low-lying coastal urban settings and the co-located municipal assets to allow the prioritisation of sites for future monitoring and management.

Research Papers, Lincoln University

The disastrous earthquakes that struck Christchurch in 2010 and 2011 seriously impacted on the individual and collective lives of Māori residents. This paper continues earlier, predominantly qualitative research on the immediate effects on Māori by presenting an analysis of a survey carried out 18 months after the most destructive event, on 22 February 2011. Using a set-theoretic approach, pathways to Māori resilience are identified, emphasising the combination of whānau connectivity and high incomes in those who have maintained or increased their wellbeing post-disaster. However, the results show that if resilience is used to describe a “bounce back” in wellbeing, Māori are primarily enduring the post-disaster environment. This endurance phase is a precursor to any resilience and will be of much longer duration than first thought. With continued uncertainty in the city and wider New Zealand economy, this endurance may not necessarily lead to a more secure environment for Māori in the city.

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, University of Canterbury Library

This thesis focuses on the role of legal preparedness for managing large-scale urban disasters in Aotearoa New Zealand. It uses the Auckland Volcanic Field as a case study to answer the question: ‘is New Zealand’s current legal framework prepared to respond to and recover from a large-scale urban disaster?’. The Auckland Volcanic Field was chosen as the main case study because a future eruption is a low likelihood, high-impact event that New Zealand is going to have to manage in the future. Case studies are a key feature of this thesis as both New Zealand based and overseas examples are used to explore the role of legal preparedness by identifying and investigating a range of legal issues that need to be addressed in advance of a future Auckland Volcanic Field eruption. Of particular interest is the impact of legal preparedness for the recovery phase. The New Zealand case studies include; Canterbury earthquake sequence 2010-2011, the Kaikōura earthquake 2016, the Auckland flooding 2018, and the North Island Severe Weather event 2023, which encompasses both the Auckland Anniversary weekend flooding and Cyclone Gabrielle. As New Zealand has not experienced a large-scale urban volcanic eruption, overseas examples are explored to provide insights into the legal issues that are volcano specific. The overseas volcanic case studies cover eruptions in Heimaey (Iceland), the Soufrière Hills (Montserrat and the Grenadines), La Soufrière (St Vincent) and Tungurahua (Ecuador). New Zealand’s past experiences highlight a trend for introducing post-event legal frameworks to manage recovery. Consequently, the current disaster management system is not prioritising legal preparedness and instead is choosing to rely on exceptional powers. Unsurprisingly, the introduction of new post-event recovery frameworks has repercussions. In New Zealand, new post-event legal frameworks are introduced swiftly under urgency, they contain broad unstructured decision-making powers, and are often flawed. As these exceptional new frameworks sit outside the ‘normal’ legal frameworks, they in effect create a parallel “shadow system”. Based on the evidence explored in this thesis it does not appear that Auckland’s current disaster management framework is prepared to deal with a large-scale urban event caused by an Auckland Volcanic Field eruption. Following this conclusion, it is the submission of this thesis that New Zealand’s current legal framework is not prepared to respond to and recover from a large-scale urban disaster. To become legally prepared, New Zealand needs to consider the legal tools required to manage large-scale urban disasters in advance. This will prevent the creation of a legal vacuum in the aftermath of disasters and the need for new recovery frameworks. Adopting a new attitude will require a change in approach towards legal preparedness which prioritises it, rather than sidelining it. This may also require changes within New Zealand’s disaster management system including the introduction of a formal monitoring mechanism, which will support and prioritise legal preparedness. This thesis has shown that not legally preparing for future disasters is a choice which carries significant consequences. None of these consequences are inevitable when managing large-scale disasters, however they are inevitable when frameworks are not legally prepared in advance. To not legally prepare, is to prepare to fail and thus create a disaster by choice.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of participants signing in at the registration table for Milk Fight - a dairy-fuelled urban food fight by local artist Gaby Montego. The event was part of FESTA 2014. Milk Fight was held on the former Convention Centre site at 100 Peterborough Street.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of local artist Gaby Montejo in a cow onesie before his Milk Fight event. Milk Fight was a dairy-fuelled urban food fight, which was part of FESTA 2014. It was held on the former Convention Centre site at 100 Peterborough Street.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of local artist Gaby Montejo in a cow onesie before his Milk Fight event. Milk Fight was a dairy-fuelled urban food fight, which was part of FESTA 2014. It was held on the former Convention Centre site at 100 Peterborough Street.

Research papers, Victoria University of Wellington

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. 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.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of an Urban Search and Rescue team member examining the contents of a flat on Poplar Street during the Residential Access Project. The project gave residents temporary access within the red-zone cordon in order to retrieve items from their homes. The buildings wall has crumbled leaving the room exposed.

Audio, Radio New Zealand

Monday marks ten years since the Christchurch earthquake shattered New Zealand's second largest city. One-hundred-and-eighty five people lost their lives when a magnitude 6.2 quake shook the city apart. David Berry was one of the first responders in the city centre as part of Urban Search and Rescue. He speaks to Corin Dann.

Videos, UC QuakeStudies

The story of the city’s urban marae, Ngā Hau e Whā, built from 1981 onwards, begins in the migration of Māori from their tūrangawaewae to cities. The marae project is linked to a desire among city elders to move Māori out of the city centre to the east.

Research Papers, Lincoln University

The topic of ‘resilience’ thinking seems of late to have superseded that of ‘sustainability’ thinking. Sustainability means simply that which sustains and lasts but has taken on many different subtle nuances over the last 20 years since it came into common parlance with the Bruntland Report of 1987, which sought to clarify the definition. However, resilience ‘speak’ has become hot property now, especially highlighted since Christchurch experienced a natural disaster in the form of several large earthquakes from Sep 2010 until most recently in December 2011. Many people comment on how resilient people have been, how resilient the city has been, so it seems timely to investigate what resilience actually means and importantly, resilient to what and of what? (Lorenz, 2010). This essay will look at the concept of systems and resilience, definitions and theories will be explored generally and then these concepts will be more closely defined within the context of a particular system, that of Somerfield School located in the western suburbs of Christchurch.

Research Papers, Lincoln University

The earthquakes that struck Ōtautahi/Christchurch began September 2010 and continued throughout2012 with the worse shock being February 22, 2011. The extended ‘seismic event’ radically altered thegeophysical and socio-cultural environments of the city. This working paper presents a broad array of datadescribing the impacts of the disaster on Māori. These data frame the results of small email surveyconducted 18 months after the most destructive February 22, 2011. This survey followed two projectsinvestigating the resilience of Māori to the disaster (Lambert & Mark-Shadbolt, 2011; Lambert & Mark-Shadbolt, 2012; Lambert, Mark-Shadbolt, Ataria, & Black, 2012). Results show that while the termresilience has become common to the point of cliché, the Māori experience thus far is best described asendurance.

Research Papers, Lincoln University

The impact of the Canterbury earthquake sequence of 2010-12 and its aftermath has been enormous. This inventory lists some of the thousands of community-led groups and initiatives across the region that have developed or evolved as a result of the quake. This inventory is the third such inventory to have been produced. The Christchurch Earthquake Activity Inventory was released by Landcare Research in May 2011, three months after the devastating 22 February 2011 earthquake. The second inventory, entitled An Inventory of Community-led Recovery Initiatives in Canterbury, was collated by Bailey Peryman and Dr Suzanne Vallance (Lincoln University) approximately one year after the February earthquake. The research for this third inventory was undertaken over a four month period from June to September 2013, and was conducted primarily through online searches.This research was undertaken with funding support from the Natural Hazards Platform and GNS, New Zealand.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Members of the USAID Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) hoisted on the platform of a crane, next to the Forsyth Barr Building on the corner of Armagh and Colombo Streets. Some of the windows below have been broken open by Urban Search and Rescue workers looking for trapped people.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of a member of the New Zealand Police using a search dog to examine the rubble of the Caledonian Hall on Kilmore Street. There are two crushed cars amongst the rubble. To the right a member of an Urban Search and Rescue team is watching on.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Using greater Christchurch as a case study, this research seeks to understand the key drivers of residential choice of families with children who live in recently developed, low-density greenfield subdivisions. In particular, the research examines the role that transport-related implications play in families’ choice of residence and location. It also explores the lived experience of the quotidian travel of these households, and the intrinsic value of their time in the car. While the research is situated in one particular location, it is designed to gain an understanding of urban processes and residents’ experiences of these as applicable to broader settings. Concerns about the pernicious environmental, fiscal, and wellbeing effects of sprawling urban form have been growing over the past few decades, inciting many cities including Christchurch to start shifting planning policies to try and achieve greater intensification and a denser development pattern. The 2010/2011 Christchurch earthquake sequence and its destruction of thousands of homes however created huge pressure for housing development, the bulk of which is now occurring on greenfield sites on the peripheries of Christchurch City and its neighbouring towns. Drawing on the insights provided by a wide body of both qualitative and quantitative literature on residential choice, transport and urban form, and mobilities literature as a basis, this research is interested in the attraction of these growing neighbourhoods to families, and puts the focus firmly on the attitudes, values, motivations, decisions, and lived experience of those who live in the growing suburbs of Christchurch.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Since September 2010 Christchurch, New Zealand, has experienced a number of significant earthquakes. In addition to loss of life, this has resulted in significant destruction to infrastructure, including road corridors; and buildings, especially in the central city, where it has been estimated that 60% of buildings will need to be rebuilt. The rebuild and renewal of Christchurch has initially focused on the central city under the direction of the Christchurch City Council. This has seen the development of a draft Central City Plan that includes a number of initiatives that should encourage the use of the bicycle as a mode of transport. The rebuild and renewal of the remainder of the city is under the jurisdiction of a specially set up authority, the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA). CERA reports to an appointed Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, who is responsible for coordinating the planning, spending, and actual rebuilding work needed for the recovery. Their plans for the renewal and rebuild of the remainder of the city are not yet known. This presentation will examine the potential role of the bicycle as a mode of transport in a rebuilt Christchurch. The presentation will start by describing the nature of damage to Christchurch as a result of the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. It will then review the Central City Plan (the plan for the rebuild and renewal for central Christchurch) focusing particularly on those aspects that affect the role of the bicycle. The potential for the success of this plan will be assessed. It will specifically reflect on this in light of some recent research in Christchurch that examined the importance of getting infrastructure right if an aim of transport planning is to attract new people to cycle for utilitarian reasons.