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Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

INTRODUCTION: There is little research on the role of creative arts and craft in disaster recovery. This article reports findings about the emergent role of crafting from research conducted after the 2010–2011 series of earthquakes in Christchurch and surrounding districts in Aotearoa New Zealand. In particular, the article focuses on the significance and differing interpretations of the notion of place expressed by participants through their craftwork, in this case led by women and mediated by the post-earthquake geographic and temporal context. METHOD: This qualitative research included nine individual interviews and five focus group interviews with crafters from Christchurch and surrounding districts. There were 35 participants in total, 33 were women. Applied thematic analysis was used to code the data and identify themes. These themes included connection to place, the symbolism of craft, the healing experience of craft groups and places for women. The notion of place was evident across all three themes. FINDINGS: The findings from the research demonstrate differing ways in which the significance of place was reflected in the craftwork. Participants interpreted the concept of place in descriptive, symbolic, and therapeutic ways. IMPLICATIONS: More understanding about the way creative endeavours like crafting can be used to help ameliorate the impact of natural disasters is needed. Social work practitioners are encouraged to explore place-based wellbeing during their work with service users and to include aspects of artistry, craft and creativity.

Research Papers, Lincoln University

The paper examines community benefits provided by an established community garden following a major earthquake and discusses possible implications for community garden planning and design in disaster-prone cities. Recent studies show that following extreme storm events community gardens can supply food, enhance social empowerment, provide safe gathering spots, and restorative practices, to remind people of normality. However, the beneficial role played by community gardens following earthquakes is less well known. To fill this gap, the study examines the role played by a community garden in Christchurch, New Zealand, following the 2010/2011 Canterbury Earthquakes. The garden's role is evaluated based on a questionnaire-based survey and in-depth interviews with gardeners, as well as on data regarding the garden use before and after the earthquakes. Findings indicate the garden helped gardeners cope with the post-quake situation. The garden served as an important place to de-stress, share experiences, and gain community support. Garden features that reportedly supported disaster recovery include facilities that encourage social interaction and bonding such as central meeting and lunch places and communal working areas.

Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

This section considers forms of collaboration in situated and community projects embedded in important spatial transformation processes in New Zealand cities. It aims to shed light on specific combinations of material and semantic aspects characterising the relation between people and their environment. Contributions focus on participative urban transformations. The essays that follow concentrate on the dynamics of territorial production of associations between multiple actors belonging both to civil society and constituted authority. Their authors were directly engaged in the processes that are reported and conceptualised, thereby offering evidence gained through direct hands-on experience. Some of the investigations use case studies that are conspicuous examples of the recent post-traumatic urban development stemming from the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010-2011. More precisely, these cases belong to the early phases of the programmes of the Christchurch recovery or the Wellington seismic prevention. The relevance of these experiences for the scope of this study lies in the unprecedented height of public engagement at local, national and international levels, a commitment reached also due to the high impact, both emotional and concrete, that affected the entire society.

Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

Reinforced concrete buildings that satisfied modern seismic design criteria generally behaved as expected during the recent Canterbury and Kaikoura earthquakes in New Zealand, forming plastic hinges in intended locations. While this meant that life-safety performance objectives were met, widespread demolition and heavy economic losses took place in the aftermath of the earthquakes.The Christchurch central business district was particularly hard hit, with over 60% of the multistorey reinforced concrete buildings being demolished. A lack of knowledge on the post-earthquake residual capacity of reinforced concrete buildings was a contributing factor to the mass demolition.Many aspects related to the assessment of earthquake-damaged reinforced concrete buildings require further research. This thesis focusses on improving the state of knowledge on the post earthquakeresidual capacity and reparability of moderately damaged plastic hinges, with an emphasis on plastic hinges typical of modern moment frame structures. The repair method focussed on is epoxy injection of cracks and patching of spalled concrete. A targeted test program on seventeen nominally identical large-scale ductile reinforced concrete beams, three of which were repaired by epoxy injection following initial damaging loadings, was conducted to support these objectives. Test variables included the loading protocol, the loading rate, and the level of restraint to axial elongation.The information that can be gleaned from post-earthquake damage surveys is investigated. It is shown that residual crack widths are dependent on residual deformations, and are not necessarily indicative of the maximum rotation demands or the plastic hinge residual capacity. The implications of various other types of damage typical of beam and column plastic hinges are also discussed.Experimental data are used to demonstrate that the strength and deformation capacity of plastic hinges with modern seismic detailing are often unreduced as a result of moderate earthquake induced damage, albeit with certain exceptions. Special attention is given to the effects of prior yielding of the longitudinal reinforcement, accounting for the low-cycle fatigue and strain ageing phenomena. A material-level testing program on the low-cycle fatigue behaviour of grade 300E reinforcing steel was conducted to supplement the data available in the literature.A reduction in stiffness, relative to the initial secant stiffness to yield, occurs due to moderate plastic hinging damage. This reduction in stiffness is shown to be correlated with the ductility demand,and a proposed model gives a conservative lower-bound estimate of the residual stiffness following an arbitrary earthquake-type loading. Repair by epoxy injection is shown to be effective in restoring the majority of stiffness to plastic hinges in beams. Epoxy injection is also shown to have implications for the residual strength and elongation characteristics of repaired plastic hinges.

Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

High demolition rates were observed in New Zealand after the 2010-2011 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence despite the success of modern seismic design standards to achieve required performance objectives such as life safety and collapse prevention. Approximately 60% of the multi-storey reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in the Christchurch Central Business District were demolished after these earthquakes, even when only minor structural damage was present. Several factors influenced the decision of demolition instead of repair, one of them being the uncertainty of the seismic capacity of a damaged structure. To provide more insight into this topic, the investigation conducted in this thesis evaluated the residual capacity of moderately damaged RC walls and the effectiveness of repair techniques to restore the seismic performance of heavily damaged RC walls. The research outcome provided insights for developing guidelines for post-earthquake assessment of earthquake-damaged RC structures. The methodology used to conduct the investigation was through an experimental program divided into two phases. During the first phase, two walls were subjected to different types of pre-cyclic loading to represent the damaged condition from a prior earthquake, and a third wall represented a repair scenario with the damaged wall being repaired using epoxy injection and repair mortar after the pre-cyclic loading. Comparisons of these test walls to a control undamaged wall identified significant reductions in the stiffness of the damaged walls and a partial recovery in the wall stiffness achieved following epoxy injection. Visual damage that included distributed horizontal and diagonal cracks and spalling of the cover concrete did not affect the residual strength or displacement capacity of the walls. However, evidence of buckling of the longitudinal reinforcement during the pre-cyclic loading resulted in a slight reduction in strength recovery and a significant reduction in the displacement capacity of the damaged walls. Additional experimental programs from the literature were used to provide recommendations for modelling the response of moderately damaged RC walls and to identify a threshold that represented a potential reduction in the residual strength and displacement capacity of damaged RC walls in future earthquakes. The second phase of the experimental program conducted in this thesis addressed the replacement of concrete and reinforcing steel as repair techniques for heavily damaged RC walls. Two walls were repaired by replacing the damaged concrete and using welded connections to connect new reinforcing bars with existing bars. Different locations of the welded connections were investigated in the repaired walls to study the impact of these discontinuities at the critical section. No significant changes were observed in the stiffness, strength, and displacement capacity of the repaired walls compared to the benchmark undamaged wall. Differences in the local behaviour at the critical section were observed in one of the walls but did not impact the global response. The results of these two repaired walls were combined with other experimental programs found in the literature to assemble a database of repaired RC walls. Qualitative and quantitative analyses identified trends across various parameters, including wall types, damage before repair, and repair techniques implemented. The primary outcome of the database analysis was recommendations for concrete and reinforcing steel replacement to restore the strength and displacement capacity of heavily damaged RC walls.

Research papers, Victoria University of Wellington

Diverse Density proposes an alternative housing strategy to the idealistic top-down process of housing development.  The term ‘Top – down’ refers to a situation in which decisions are made by a few people in authority rather than by the people who are affected by the decisions (Cambridge).  Problems/Position/Question: New Zealand’s urban housing is in a period of flux. Pressures of densification have permitted the intervention of medium density housing development schemes but these are not always successful. These typically top-down processes often result in internally focused design schemes that do not adhere to their specific context. The subsequent design outcomes can cause detrimental impacts to the local, urban and architectural conditions.  With vast quantities of council regulations, building restrictions and design guidelines clouding over the housing sector, commonly referred to as ‘red tape’, occupant participation in the housing development sector is dwindling. A boundless separation between top-down and traditional housing processes has occurred and our existing neighbourhoods and historic architectural character are taking on the brunt of the problem. The thought-provoking, alternative housings strategies of key research theorists Alejandro Aravena and John Habraken frame positions that challenge contemporary densification methods with an alternative strategy.  This position is addressed by endeavoring to answer; How can demands for denser housing achieve dynamic design responses that adhere to changes in occupancy, function and local site conditions?  Aim: The aim of this thesis is to challenge New Zealand’s current housing densification methods by proposing an alternative densification strategy. Explicit devotion will be attributed to opposing top-down building developments. Secondly, this thesis aims to test a speculative site-specific housing model. The implementation of a Christchurch housing scenario will situate an investigative study to test the strategy and its ability to stimulate greater diversity, site responsiveness, functional adaptability and occupancy permutation. The post-earthquake housing conditions of Christchurch provide an appropriate scenario to test and implement design-led investigations.  Objectives: The primary objectives of this design-led research investigation it to challenge the idealistic top-down method of developing density with a new method to:  - Develop contextual architectural cohesion - Encourage residential diversity - Reinvigorate architectural autonomy - Respond to, and recognise, existing site conditions - Develop a housing model that: - Adapts to occupant functionality preferences - Caters to occupancy diversity - Achieves contextual responsiveness  The proposition is addressed through a speculative design-led scenario study. A well-established Christchurch urban environment is adopted to implement and critique the envisioned alternative strategy. Development of the designs responsiveness, adaptability, and functionality produce a prototype housing model that actively adheres to its particular context.  Implication: The implications of this research would be an alternative densification strategy to perceive the advancement of punctual assessment of building compliance. With accelerated building processes, the research may have implications for addressing New Zealand’s housing crisis whilst simultaneously providing diverse, personable and responsive architectural solutions. A more dynamic, up-to-date and responsive housing development sector would be informed.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

The lived reality of the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes and its implications for the Waimakariri District, a small but rapidly growing district (third tier of government in New Zealand) north of Christchurch, can illustrate how community well-being, community resilience, and community capitals interrelate in practice generating paradoxical results out of what can otherwise be conceived as a textbook ‘best practice’ case of earthquake recovery. The Waimakariri District Council’s integrated community based recovery framework designed and implemented post-earthquakes in the District was built upon strong political, social, and moral capital elements such as: inter-institutional integration and communication, participation, local knowledge, and social justice. This approach enabled very positive community outputs such as artistic community interventions of the urban environment and communal food forests amongst others. Yet, interests responding to broader economic and political processes (continuous central government interventions, insurance and reinsurance processes, changing socio-cultural patterns) produced a significant loss of community capitals (E.g.: social fragmentation, participation exhaustion, economic leakage, etc.) which simultaneously, despite local Council and community efforts, hindered community well-being in the long term. The story of the Waimakariri District helps understand how resilience governance operates in practice where multi-scalar, non-linear, paradoxical, dynamic, and uncertain outcomes appear to be the norm that underpins the construction of equitable, transformative, and sustainable pathways towards the future.

Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

Unreinforced masonry (URM) cavity-wall construction is a form of masonry where two leaves of clay brick masonry are separated by a continuous air cavity and are interconnected using some form of tie system. A brief historical introduction is followed by details of a survey undertaken to determine the prevalence of URM cavity-wall buildings in New Zealand. Following the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes it was observed that URM cavity-walls generally suffered irreparable damage due to a lack of effective wall restraint and deficient cavity-tie connections, combined with weak mortar strength. It was found that the original cavity-ties were typically corroded due to moisture ingress, resulting in decreased lateral loadbearing capacity of the cavity-walls. Using photographic data pertaining to Christchurch URM buildings that were obtained during post-earthquake reconnaissance, 252 cavity-walls were identified and utilised to study typical construction details and seismic performance. The majority (72%, 182) of the observed damage to URM cavity-wall construction was a result of out-of-plane type wall failures. Three types of out-of-plane wall failure were recognised: (1) overturning response, (2) one-way bending, and (3) two-way bending. In-plane damage was less widely observed (28%) and commonly included diagonal shear cracking through mortar bed joints or bricks. The collected data was used to develop an overview of the most commonly-encountered construction details and to identify typical deficiencies in earthquake response that can be addressed via the selection and implementation of appropriate mitigation interventions. http://www.journals.elsevier.com/structures

Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

Courage has remained an elusive concept to define despite having been in the English lexicon for hundreds of years. The Canterbury earthquake sequence that began in 2010 provided a unique context in which to undertake research that would contribute to further conceptualisation of courage. This qualitative study was undertaken in Christchurch, New Zealand, with adults over the age of 70 who experienced the Canterbury earthquakes and continued to live in the Canterbury region. The population group was chosen because it is an under researched group in post-disaster environments, and one that offers valuable insights because of members' length and breadth of life experiences, and likely reminiscent and reflective life stage. A constructivist grounded theory approach was utilised, with data collected through semi-structured focus groups and individual key informant interviews. The common adverse experience of the participants initially discussed was the earthquakes, which was followed by exploration of courage in their other lived experiences. Through an inductive process of data analysis, conceptual categories were identified, which when further analysed and integrated, contributed to a definition of courage. The definition was subsequently discussed with social work professionals who had remained working in the Canterbury region after experiencing the earthquakes. From the examples and the actions described within these, a process model was developed to support the application of courage. The model includes five steps: recognising an adverse situation, making a conscious decision to act, accessing sources of motivation, mastering emotion and taking action. Defining and utilising courage can help people to face adversity associated with everyday life and ultimately supports self-actualisation and self-development. Recommendations from the study include teaching about courage within social work education, utilising the process model within supervision, intentionally involving older adults in emergency management planning and developing specific social work tasks in hospital settings following a disaster.

Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

Disasters, either man-made or natural, are characterised by a multiplicity of factors including loss of property, life, environmental degradation, and psychosocial malfunction of the affected community. Although much research has been undertaken on proactive disaster management to help reduce the impacts of natural and man-made disasters, many challenges still remain. In particular, the desire to re-house the affected as quickly as possible can affect long-term recovery if a considered approach is not adopted. Promoting recovery activities, coordination, and information sharing at national and international levels are crucial to avoid duplication. Mannakkara and Wilkinson’s (2014) modified “Build Back Better” (BBB) concept aims for better resilience by incorporating key resilience elements in post-disaster restoration. This research conducted an investigation into the effectiveness of BBB in the recovery process after the 2010–2011 earthquakes in greater Christchurch, New Zealand. The BBB’s impact was assessed in terms of its five key components: built environment, natural environment, social environment, economic environment, and implementation process. This research identified how the modified BBB propositions can assist in disaster risk reduction in the future, and used both qualitative and quantitative data from both the Christchurch and Waimakariri recovery processes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with key officials from the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority, and city councils, and supplemented by reviewing of the relevant literature. Collecting data from both qualitative and quantitative sources enabled triangulation of the data. The interviewees had directly participated in all phases of the recovery, which helped the researcher gain a clear understanding of the recovery process. The findings led to the identification of best practices from the Christchurch and Waimakariri recovery processes and underlined the effectiveness of the BBB approach for all recovery efforts. This study contributed an assessment tool to aid the measurement of resilience achieved through BBB indicators. This tool provides systematic and structured approach to measure the performance of ongoing recovery.

Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

This study is a qualitative investigation into the decision-making behaviour of commercial property owners (investors and developers) who are rebuilding in a city centre after a major disaster. In 2010/2011, Christchurch, the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, was a site of numerous earthquakes. The stronger earthquakes destroyed many buildings and public infrastructure in the commercial inner city. As a result, affected property owners lost all or most of their buildings, a significant proportion of which were old and in the last phase of their life span. They had to negotiate pay-outs with insurance companies and decide, once paid out, whether they should rebuild in Christchurch or sell up and invest elsewhere. The clear majority of those who decided to reinvest in and rebuild the city are ‘locals’, almost all of whom had no prior experience of property development. Thus, in a post-disaster environment, most of these property owners have transitioned from being just being passive investors to active property developers. Their experience was interpreted using primary data gathered from in-depth and semi-structured interviews with twenty-one “informed property people” who included commercial property owners; property agents or consultants; representatives of public-sector agencies and financial institutions. The study findings showed that the decision-making behaviour of property investors and developers rebuilding after a major disaster did not necessarily follow a strict financial or profit motive as prescribed in the mainstream or neo-classical economics property literature. Rather, their decision-making behaviour has been largely shaped by emotional connections and external factors associated with their immediate environment. The theoretical proposition emerging from this study is that after a major disaster, local urban property owners are faced with two choices “to stay” or “to go”. Those who decide to stay and rebuild are typically very committed individuals who have a feeling of ownership, belonging and attachment to the city in which they live and work. These are people who will often take the lead in commercial property development, proactively making decisions and seeking positive investment outcomes for themselves which in turn result in revitalised commercial urban precincts.