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Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

The Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 and 2011 caused significant damage and disruption to the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. A Royal Commission was established to report on the causes of building failure as a result of the earthquakes as well as look at the legal and best-practice requirements for buildings in New Zealand Central Business Districts. The Royal Commission made 189 recommendations on a variety of matters including managing damaged buildings after an earthquake, the adequacy of building codes and standards, and the processes of seismic assessments of existing buildings to determine their earthquake vulnerability. In response the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, the agency responsible for administering building regulation in New Zealand, established a work programme to assist with the Canterbury rebuild and to implement the lessons learned throughout New Zealand. The five primary work streams in the programme are: • Facilitating the Canterbury Rebuild • Structural Performance and Design Standards • Geotechnical and structural guidance • Existing Building Resilience • Post Disaster Building Management This paper provides more detail on each of the work streams. There has been significant collaboration between the New Zealand Government and the research community, technical societies, and engineering consultants, both within New Zealand and internationally, to deliver the programme and improve the resilience of the New Zealand built environment. This has presented major challenges for an extremely busy industry in the aftermath of the Canterbury earthquakes. The paper identifies the items of work that have been completed and the work that is still in progress at the time of writing.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Clarendon Tower (left), Westpac Bank (centre), Grant Thornton building (white right of the Westpac in the distance), ANZ Bank (white with vertical stripes below the Grant Thornton), BNZ bank (red), and Holiday Inn (right) all under demolition, viewed from Alice in Videoland".

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A damaged building on Cashel Street near Oxford Terrace. The top of the facade has fallen off the building into the street below, taking the awning with it. Bricks from the building still lie on the footpath where they fell. Above, the windows have been braced with plywood. Wire fencing has been placed around the building as a cordon.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The Forsyth Barr building and PricewaterhouseCoopers building. It was recently announced that PricewaterhouseCoopers will be demolished as it is uneconomic to restore, and we understand Forsyth Barr is still under discussion".

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "People at the cordon on the corner of Durham and St Asaph Street, soldiers watching by. In the background is the Environment Court building at 83 Armagh Street, formerly the Canterbury Society of Arts. This building was added to the CERA demolitions list on 5 March 2012".

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

The 4th of September 2010 Mw 7.1 Darfield (Canterbury) earthquake had generated significant ground shaking within the Christchurch Central Business District (CBD). Despite the apparently significant shaking, the observed structural damage for pre-1970s reinforced concrete (RC) buildings was indeed limited and lower than what was expected for such typology of buildings. This paper explores analytically and qualitatively the different aspects of the "apparent‟ good seismic performance of the pre-1970s RC buildings in the Christchurch CBD, following the earthquake reconnaissance survey by the authors. Damage and building parameters survey result, based on a previously established inventory of building stock of these non-ductile RC buildings, is briefly reported. From an inventory of 75 buildings, one building was selected as a numerical case-study to correlate the observed damage with the non-linear analyses. The result shows that the pre-1970s RC frame buildings performed as expected given the intensity of the ground motion shaking during the Canterbury earthquake. Given the brittle nature of this type of structure, it was demonstrated that more significant structural damage and higher probability of collapse could occur when the buildings were subjected to alternative input signals with different frequency content and duration characteristics and still compatible to the seismicity hazard for Christchurch CBD.