Water flows down the driveway of a house in Richmond. The photographer comments, "Tom and Yvonne McBrearty's house. This lovely house is now on an island in a creek. The water from Dudley Creek found its way to the Avon through their yard. It stopped flowing after two days".
Flowers float down the Avon River during the River of Flowers memorial event. The photographer comments, "One year on, Riverside residents gather for a 2 minute silence and to cast flowers in the river. Riverside residents met at the Medway St bridge to commemorate the anniversary of the 22/2/11 quake".
An aerial photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Victoria Square is at the centre of this picture with its green lawns and trees. The bare patch of earth in front s the demolition sites of the Allan McLean building, the Oxford on Avon, and Plunket House. The contract to demolish the Crowne Plaza Hotel has been let, while the fate of the Town Hall is still undecided. The Convention Centre is coming down. On the very bottom, slightly to the right is the Medlab building which is also to be demolished. In the bottom left corner is the PWC building which is also to be demolished".
A truck used to drain the septic tanks installed in front of Avonside properties to allow residents to use their toilets after the 4 September 2010 earthquake. The truck's operator has parked it beside the Avon River on Avonside Drive while he takes a break from working.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Looking south across Bealey Avenue and between Colombo and Durham Streets towards the CBD".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Looking north along Cambridge Terrace and Durham Street from St Michael and All Angels Church. New Cashel Mall is at centre right".
A photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "A section of Avonside Drive shows how the infrastructure is no longer maintained to the same level, with regard to roading, sewage and water services. Even the grass on the banks of the River Avon is no longer mown as regularly".
A truck used to drain the septic tanks installed in front of Avonside properties to allow residents to use their toilets after the 4 September 2010 earthquake. The truck's operator has parked it beside the Avon River on Avonside Drive while he takes a break from working.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "It's not easy to spot, but look at the floor level in this picture. By the bar, it's about half a metre higher than in the foreground. Pressure under the floor pushed the whole floor up".
An aerial photograph of the Christchurch central city. The photograph is captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Brannigans building is in the centre of the photograph with Gloucester Street running through the middle of the photograph. The photograph shows the rear of the building".
Flowers float down the Avon River during the River of Flowers memorial event. In the background, residents and workers look on. The photographer comments, "One year on, Riverside residents gather for a 2 minute silence and to cast flowers in the river. Riverside residents met at the Medway St bridge to commemorate the anniversary of the 22/2/11 quake".
People gather beside the Avon River in Riccarton Bush for the River of Flowers event, commemorating the second anniversary of the 22 February earthquake. A sign reads "In memory of those we lost, Feb 22nd 2011, River of Flowers". One of the organisers holds a basket of flowers, to distribute to people who couldn't bring their own.
Flowers float down the Avon River during the River of Flowers memorial event. In the background, residents and workers look on. The photographer comments, "One year on, Riverside residents gather for a 2 minute silence and to cast flowers in the river. Riverside residents met at the Medway St bridge to commemorate the anniversary of the 22/2/11 quake".
Flowers float down the Avon River during the River of Flowers memorial event. In the background, residents and workers look on. The photographer comments, "One year on, Riverside residents gather for a 2 minute silence and to cast flowers in the river. Riverside residents met at the Medway St bridge to commemorate the anniversary of the 22/2/11 quake".
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".
An aerial photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Central city blocks bounded by Colombo Street, Hereford Street, Cashel Street, and High Street".
A bunch of flowers laid beside the Avon River during the River of Flowers event held in Riccarton Bush, commemorating the second anniversary of the 22 February earthquake. The photographer comments, "The organisers told me these were brought by an elderly South African woman. She had a disability so couldn't make it down to the riverbank herself, so she asked the organisers to throw them in on her behalf".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Horseshoe Lake area of Burwood has that name because a loop of the Avon River encircled it in a horseshoe shape. There used to be an attractive walk alongside the loop of the River. Much of the path is now under water as the land level has subsided as a result of the earthquakes".
A warning sign posted on River Road beside the Avon River reads "Health warning, contaminated water. Due to sewage overflows this water is unsafe for human contact and activity and is a public health risk. Please keep all people and pets out of contact with the water and do not cosume and seafood or shellfish collected from this area." The photographer comments, "A bike ride around the CBD. River Rd subsidence".
An aerial photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The Avon River windings its way through densely pupulated housing. The Gayhurst Road bridge can be seen. The piece of land circumscribed by the loop of the river is all zoned red, as is the land to the left of the photo. On the right, most of the land is zoned green or orange".
An aerial photograph of the Christchurch city central. The photograph is captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Provincial Council Chambers in the middle, with Brannigans on the lower left, the Central Library lower middle and the Farmers car park on the lower right".
A sewage pumping station on Avonside Drive has been lifted out of the ground by liquefaction. In the background, the damaged Snell Place footbridge over the Avon River is closed off with cordon fencing. The photographer comments, "A Sunday afternoon ride to New Brighton, then back via Aranui, Wainoni, Dallington, and Richmond. Not a cheerful experience. Dallington footbridge. The two pieces of this foot bridge have moved towards each other, so the bridge has developed quite a peak. The sewage pumping station has been heaved out of the ground by hydraulic pressure during quakes".
An aerial photograph of the Copthorne Hotel on Colombo Street. The photograph has been captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "When the PricewaterhouseCoopers building is demolished, the Copthorne Central Hotel will be alone on the block. Oxford on the Avon and Plunket House are also gone from Oxford Terrace, and on the other side of the river is the demolition site of the PGC building where 18 people died".
An aerial photograph of a residential area in Avonside. The photograph has been captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The dominant road in this picture is Avondale Road which crosses the River Avon. To the left of this photograph is all zoned red apart from a small piece on the other side of the river. On the right-hand side of Avondale Road, some streets are zoned green although the streets closest to the river are red-zoned".
The Canterbury earthquakes resulted in numerous changes to the waterways of Ōtautahi Christchurch. These included bank destabilisation, liquefaction effects, changes in bed levels, and associated effects on flow regimes and inundation levels. This study set out to determine if these effects had altered the location and pattern of sites utilised by īnanga (Galaxias maculatus) for spawning, which are typically restricted to very specific locations in upper estuarine areas. Extensive surveys were carried out in the Heathcote/Ōpāwaho and Avon/Ōtākaro catchments over the four peak months of the 2015 spawning season. New spawning sites were found in both rivers and analysis against pre-earthquake records identified that other significant changes have occurred. Major changes include the finding of many new spawning sites in the Heathcote/Ōpāwaho catchment. Sites now occur up to 1.5km further downstream than the previously reported limit and include the first records of spawning below the Woolston Cut. Spawning sites in the Avon/Ōtākaro catchment also occur in new locations. In the mainstem, sites now occur both upstream and downstream of all previously reported locations. A concentrated area of spawning was identified in Lake Kate Sheppard at a distinctly different location versus pre-quake records, and no spawning was found on the western shores. Spawning was also recorded for the first time in Anzac Creek, a nearby waterway connected to Lake Kate Sheppard via a series of culverts.
A copy of a letter from Seamus O'Cromtha which was sent to the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) on 3 September 2016. The letter was sent on behalf of Empowered Christchurch. In the letter, O'Cromtha calls on the Chief Executive to instruct the Christchurch City Council to stop issuing building consents in areas such as the Avon River floodplain until stop banks have been erected along the river. O'Cromtha comments, "Properties that should be protected by stop banks currently have no protection against flooding".
Liquefaction-induced lateral spreading during earthquakes poses a significant hazard to the built environment, as observed in Christchurch during the 2010 to 2011 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence (CES). It is critical that geotechnical earthquake engineers are able to adequately predict both the spatial extent of lateral spreads and magnitudes of associated ground movements for design purposes. Published empirical and semi-empirical models for predicting lateral spread displacements have been shown to vary by a factor of <0.5 to >2 from those measured in parts of Christchurch during CES. Comprehensive post- CES lateral spreading studies have clearly indicated that the spatial distribution of the horizontal displacements and extent of lateral spreading along the Avon River in eastern Christchurch were strongly influenced by geologic, stratigraphic and topographic features.
The Canterbury Earthquake Sequence 2010-2011 (CES) induced widespread liquefaction in many parts of Christchurch city. Liquefaction was more commonly observed in the eastern suburbs and along the Avon River where the soils were characterised by thick sandy deposits with a shallow water table. On the other hand, suburbs to the north, west and south of the CBD (e.g. Riccarton, Papanui) exhibited less severe to no liquefaction. These soils were more commonly characterised by inter-layered liquefiable and non-liquefiable deposits. As part of a related large-scale study of the performance of Christchurch soils during the CES, detailed borehole data including CPT, Vs and Vp have been collected for 55 sites in Christchurch. For this subset of Christchurch sites, predictions of liquefaction triggering using the simplified method (Boulanger & Idriss, 2014) indicated that liquefaction was over-predicted for 94% of sites that did not manifest liquefaction during the CES, and under-predicted for 50% of sites that did manifest liquefaction. The focus of this study was to investigate these discrepancies between prediction and observation. To assess if these discrepancies were due to soil-layer interaction and to determine the effect that soil stratification has on the develop-ment of liquefaction and the system response of soil deposits.
Liquefaction-induced lateral spreading during the 2011 Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand was severe and extensive, and data regarding the displacements associated with the lateral spreading provides an excellent opportunity to better understand the factors that influence these movements. Horizontal displacements measured from optical satellite imagery and subsurface data from the New Zealand Geotechnical Database (NZGD) were used to investigate four distinct lateral spread areas along the Avon River in Christchurch. These areas experienced displacements between 0.5 and 2 m, with the inland extent of displacement ranging from 100 m to over 600 m. Existing empirical and semi-empirical displacement models tend to under estimate displacements at some sites and over estimate at others. The integrated datasets indicate that the areas with more severe and spatially extensive displacements are associated with thicker and more laterally continuous deposits of liquefiable soil. In some areas, the inland extent of displacements is constrained by geologic boundaries and geomorphic features, as expressed by distinct topographic breaks. In other areas the extent of displacement is influenced by the continuity of liquefiable strata or by the presence of layers that may act as vertical seepage barriers. These observations demonstrate the need to integrate geologic/geomorphic analyses with geotechnical analyses when assessing the potential for lateral spreading movements.
Predictive modelling provides an efficient means to analyse the coastal environment and generate knowledge for long term urban planning. In this study, the numerical models SWAN and XBeach were incorporated into the ESRI ArcGIS interface by means of the BeachMMtool. This was applied to the Greater Christchurch coastal environment to simulate geomorphological evolution through hydrodynamic forcing. Simulations were performed using the recent sea level rise predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2013) to determine whether the statutory requirements outlined in the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement 2010 are consistent with central, regional and district designations. Our results indicate that current land use zoning in Greater Christchurch is not consistent with these predictions. This is because coastal hazard risk has not been thoroughly quantified during the process of installing the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority residential red zone. However, the Christchurch City Council’s flood management area does provide an extent to which managed coastal retreat is a real option. The results of this research suggest that progradation will continue to occur along the Christchurch foreshore due to the net sediment flux retaining an onshore direction and the current hydrodynamic activity not being strong enough to move sediment offshore. However, inundation during periods of storm surge poses a risk to human habitation on low lying areas around the Avon-Heathcote Estuary and the Brooklands lagoon.