A Christchurch primary school is moving into its permanent new home today, nine years after cliffs behind it collapsed during the city's earthquakes. Redcliffs School subsequently moved to a temporary location in the suburb of Sumner, but the new location will mean the school will return home to Redcliffs, after a land swap with the local park. The move comes after in 2016, the then National Government, overturned its own decision to close the school. Christchurch reporter Anan Zaki spoke to principal Rose McInerney ahead of today's move.
The seismic performance of soil profiles with potentially liquefiable deposits is a complex phenomenon that requires a thorough understanding of the soil properties and ground motion characteristics. The limitations of simplified liquefaction assessment methods have prompted an increase in the use of non-linear dynamic analysis methods. Focusing on onedimensional site response of a soil column, this thesis validated a soil constitutive model using in-situ pore pressure measurements and then assessed the influence of input ground motion characteristics on soil column response using traditional and newly developed metrics. Pore pressure recordings during the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence (CES) in New Zealand were used to validate the PM4Sand constitutive model. Soil profile characterization was key to accurate prediction of excess pore pressure response and accounting for any densification during the CES. Response during multiple earthquakes was captured effectively and cross-layer interaction demonstrated the model capability to capture soil response at the system-level. Synthetic and observed ground motions from the Christchurch earthquake were applied to the validated soil column to quantify the performance of synthetic motions. New metrics were developed to facilitate a robust comparison to assess performance. The synthetic input motions demonstrated a slightly larger acceleration and excess pore pressure response compared to the observed input motions. The results suggest that the synthetic motions may accumulate higher excess pore pressure at a faster rate and with fewer number of cycles in the shear response. This research compares validated soil profile subject to spectrally-matched pulse and non-pulse motions, emphasizing the inclusion of pulse motions with distinctive characteristics in ground motion suites for non-linear dynamic analysis. However, spectral matching may lead to undesired alterations in pulse characteristics. Cumulative absolute velocity and significant duration significantly differed between these two groups compared to the other key characteristics and contributed considerably to the liquefaction response. Unlike the non-pulse motions, not all of the pulse motions triggered liquefaction, likely due to their shorter significant duration. Non-pulse motions developed a greater spatial extent of liquefaction triggering in the soil profile and extended to a greater depth.
A written history of the 124-126 Cashel Street, site of the Anderson's Building.
A video of an interview with Julia Morison, a Christchurch-based artist, about her sculptures in a vacant site on the Christchurch central city. The artwork, titled 'Tree Houses for Swamp Dwellers', took over a year to make and will act as a centrepiece for the Scape Public Art festival, which begins on 27 September 2013. The sculpture was designed to provide a playground for children and a shady spot for workers on their lunch breaks. Morison also talks about how the sculpture was designed to be relocated and reconfigured so that it can be moved to a new location when construction begins on the vacant site.
This study investigates the uncertainty of simulated earthquake ground motions for smallmagnitude events (Mw 3.5 – 5) in Canterbury, New Zealand. 148 events were simulated with specified uncertainties in: event magnitude, hypocentre location, focal mechanism, high frequency rupture velocity, Brune stress parameter, the site 30-m time-averaged shear wave velocity (Vs30), anelastic attenuation (Q) and high frequency path duration. In order to capture these uncertainties, 25 realisations for each event were generated using the Graves and Pitarka (2015) hybrid broadband simulation approach. Monte-Carlo realisations were drawn from distributions for each uncertainty, to generate a suite of simulation realisations for each event and site. The fit of the multiple simulation realisations to observations were assessed using linear mixed effects regression to generate the systematic source, path and site effects components across all ground motion intensity measure residuals. Findings show that additional uncertainties are required in each of the three source, path, and site components, however the level of output uncertainty is promising considering the input uncertainties included.
The demolition site of the Gallery Apartments building, situated behind the Christchurch Art Gallery.
A cordon fence around an empty site left after the demolition of a building.
A Wilson's car park on an empty site left after the demolition of a building.
Demolition sites and rubble across from Latimer Square, near the corner of Hereford Street.
Demolition sites and rubble across from Latimer Square, near the corner of Hereford Street.
Demolition sites and rubble across from Latimer Square, near the corner of Hereford Street.
A written history of 2 Cathedral Square, site of the BNZ Building and BNZ Tower.
The demolition site of the Gallery Apartments building, situated behind the Christchurch Art Gallery.
A view down Hereford Street, with a cordoned-off demolition site on the left.
A picnic bench on an empty site left after the demolition of a building.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "A view from Kilmore Street looking south to the BNZ building on Armagh Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "110-116 Lichfield Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "235 High Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Hotel Grand Chancellor, 165 Cashel Street, has moved sideways into the parking building at 161 Cashel Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "792 Colombo Street".
A video of an interview with Shaun Gladwell, a London-based artist, about the sculptures he designed for the Christchurch central city. Gladwell talks about how the sculptures are based on skateboard forms and have been designed to be used by skateboarders. He also talks about being inspired by YouTube videos of Christchurch skateboarders who used the damaged landscape in Christchurch as a skate park after the 22 February 2011 earthquake. The video includes clips from some of these YouTube videos.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "235 - 243 High Street".
Coffee Zone, a cafe in a shack on a Gap Filler site in Sydenham.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "An empty site at 133-141 Gloucester Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The site of His Lordships, 110 Lichfield Street".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Site of former Sumner community centre and library".
Three diggers clearing material from a demolished building on a site on Kilmore Street.
Diggers on a demolition site on Kilmore Street. One is drilling into the ground.
A map showing the route of a new road to the Burwood landfill site.
A photograph of the site of the demolished buildings at 245-251 Ferry Road.