The intersection of Colombo and Gloucester Streets looking north-east.
Members of the public walk past the damaged New Regent Street facades. The street has been cordoned off by security fences. The BNZ building on Armargh Street can be seen in the background.
A snapshot from GPS Boomerang's SmartBird flight over the Christchurch red zone on 23 December 2012, looking over Hereford Street with the BNZ Building almost demolished in the centre left.
A photograph taken from the top of the BNZ building. The photograph is captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti School, on the corner of High and Cashel Streets".
A photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "North-facing cityscape looking from west to north-east from the top of the BNZ building in Cathedral Square. Stitched together from nine images".
A CERA information sign on the fence in the Cathedral Square placed to provide information for the public about the buildings seen from Cathedral Square. This one says "BNZ Building: This is a dangerous building. The demolition will begin in the New Year. Once the demolition begins walking access will not be able to continue into Cathedral Square. Plans are currently underway to retrieve tenants' essential items".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The intersection of Colombo, Hereford and High Streets. Looking east along Hereford Street".
A snapshot from GPS Boomerang's SmartBird flight over the Christchurch red zone on 23 December 2012, looking over Cathedral Square with the Cathedral and the Post Office visible. The BNZ Building has been partially demolished.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Central city with the BNZ at the bottom right, the Hotel Grand Chancellor, Westpac Building and Holiday Inn clustered in the bottom centre, and Latimer Square upper".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Aerial view of the centre of the city, with the cathedral in the centre, and the art gallery in the foreground".
An aerial photograph of the Christchurch central city. The photograph has been captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Central city blocks bounded by Colombo Street, Hereford Street, Cashel Street and High Streets".
A photograph taken from the top of the BNZ building. The photograph is captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Lunchtime in the Square - high-vis jackets, hard hats and boots are mandatory for everyone inside the cordon".
A photograph taken from the top of the BNZ building. The photograph is captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "A group of people on top of the Millennium Hotel with the Pacific tower to the left of the photo".
An aerial photograph of the Christchurch CBD. The photograph has been captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "This photograph shows the many tall CBD buildings, with the Hotel Grand Chancellor under demolition in the centre of the photograph. The street in the foreground running up the photograph from left to right is Lichfield Street with the old Bus Exchange clearly visible".
None
A panoramic photograph taken at the front of Christ Church Cathedral. The front of the cathedral has steel bracing against it to limit further damage. The upper part of the front wall has crumbled completely, exposing the inside space. The Chalice sculpture is to the right and the BNZ building can be seen in the background.
A photograph taken from the top of the BNZ building. The photograph is captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Finally, the mess outside Coffee Culture on High Street has been cleared and demolition work will complete what the earthquake began. The red containers in the background are Fletchers containers, servicing the Hotel Grand Chancellor deconstruction".
A photograph taken from the top of the BNZ building. The photograph is captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "There are workers suspended from a cage about a third of the way up the Pacific Tower as well as a couple of workers on the top penthouse floor. It's hard to see where they are suspended from".
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.
The 48hr Design Challenge, run by the Christchurch City Council and held at Lincoln University, provided an opportunity for Council to gain inspiration from the design and architecture industry, while testing the draft Central City Plan currently being developed. The Challenge was a response to the recent earthquakes in Christchurch and brought together local and international talent. A total of 15 teams took part in the Challenge, with seven people in each including engineers, planners, urban designers, architects and landscape architects, as well as one student on each team. The four sites within the Red Zone included the Cathedral Square and BNZ Building; 160 Gloucester Street; the Orion NZ Building at 203 Gloucester Street; and 90 Armagh Street, including the Avon River and Victoria Square. The fifth site, which sits outside the Red Zone, is the former Christchurch Women’s Hospital at 885 Colombo Street. This is team SoLA's entry for 160 Gloucester Street.