A pdf copy of a presentation delivered at Building a Better New Zealand (BBNZ 2014) Conference. The presentation examines the relationship between innovation and productivity improvement in the construction industry.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Looking across the quad towards the new staff room at Avonside Girls High School".
A photograph of street art on the side of a building in Brighton Mall.
An aerial photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Colombo Street beginning at the Copthorne on the left and ending just past the Christchurch Cathedral".
A photograph of a partially-constructed building. The photograph is captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Rebuilding, Salisbury Street".
A photograph of members of the Dog Section of the New Zealand Police at the site of an earthquake-damaged building in central Christchurch.
A photograph of street art on a building outside Harrington's Beer Wine and Spirits in New Brighton. The artwork depicts scenes from Doctor Who.
St Germain restaurant on Worcester Street. Metal bracing has been constructed under the building's verandah but the restaurant remains open.
An aerial photograph of the Christ Church Cathedral in Cathedral Square.
A photograph of chalked messages on the side of a building in New Brighton. The messages read, "We are tough, eh." and, "Hug each other".
A photograph of a chalked message on the side of a building in New Brighton. The message reads, "From here, it can only get better".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "New Cashel Mall centre left".
A photograph looking south out a window of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Building. Notable landmarks include: New Regent Street and the Rendezvous Hotel on the left side of the photograph; the Novotel in the centre; the Lyttelton Times building to the right; and the Hotel Grand Chancellor in the background.
Students from Avonside Girls High School eating lunch outside their temporary library building, built since the earthquake. The photograph has been captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The new buildings are low and brightly painted in strong colours. The mood is similar to the Container Mall Re:Start, with bright colours, low ceilings, and a spacious layout".
A photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Now there's a new Christchurch scene. People clad in high-vis and buildings that look temporary painted jauntily".
A photograph of a window of the IRD building. Directions to a rear entrance have been written on the window.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Detail of the windows in Alice in Videoland. The building was designed with permanence and strength in mind and the new owner intends the fit out to have the same feel of permanence. His aspiration is to build the best coffee house in the world and the largest in Christchurch".
A view down New Regent Street. Several of the buildings have had their verandahs propped with steel poles, and scaffolding has been constructed on their facades.
A photograph of a section of a piece of street art on the side of a building between Brighton Mall and Hawke Street. This section of the artwork has been painted around a sign which warns the building is under electronic surveillance.
A photograph of street art on the side of a building between Brighton Mall and Hawke Street.
The research presented in this thesis investigated the environmental impacts of structural design decisions across the life of buildings located in seismic regions. In particular, the impacts of expected earthquake damage were incorporated into a traditional life cycle assessment (LCA) using a probabilistic method, and links between sustainable and resilient design were established for a range of case-study buildings designed for different seismic performance objectives. These links were quantified using a metric herein referred to as the seismic carbon risk, which represents the expected environmental impacts and resource use indicators associated with earthquake damage during buildings’ life. The research was broken into three distinct parts: (1) a city-level evaluation of the environmental impacts of demolitions following the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence in New Zealand, (2) the development of a probabilistic framework to incorporate earthquake damage into LCA, and (3) using case-study buildings to establish links between sustainable and resilient design. The first phase of the research focused on the environmental impacts of demolitions in Christchurch, New Zealand following the 2010/2011 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence. This large case study was used to investigate the environmental impact of the demolition of concrete buildings considering the embodied carbon and waste stream distribution. The embodied carbon was considered here as kilograms of CO2 equivalent that occurs on production, construction, and waste management stage. The results clearly demonstrated the significant environmental impacts that can result from moderate and large earthquakes in urban areas, and the importance of including environmental considerations when making post-earthquake demolition decisions. The next phase of the work introduced a framework for incorporating the impacts of expected earthquake damage based on a probabilistic approach into traditional LCA to allow for a comparison of seismic design decisions using a carbon lens. Here, in addition to initial construction impacts, the seismic carbon risk was quantified, including the impacts of seismic repair activities and total loss scenarios assuming reconstruction in case of non-reparability. A process-based LCA was performed to obtain the environmental consequence functions associated with structural and non-structural repair activities for multiple environmental indicators. In the final phase of the work, multiple case-study buildings were used to investigate the seismic consequences of different structural design decisions for buildings in seismic regions. Here, two case-study buildings were designed to multiple performance objectives, and the upfront carbon costs, and well as the seismic carbon risk across the building life were compared. The buildings were evaluated using the framework established in phase 2, and the results demonstrated that the seismic carbon risk can significantly be reduced with only minimal changes to the upfront carbon for buildings designed for a higher base shear or with seismic protective systems. This provided valuable insight into the links between resilient and sustainable design decisions. Finally, the results and observations from the work across the three phases of research described above were used to inform a discussion on important assumptions and topics that need to be considered when quantifying the environmental impacts of earthquake damage on buildings. These include: selection of a non-repairable threshold (e.g. a value beyond which a building would be demolished rather than repaired), the time value of carbon (e.g. when in the building life the carbon is released), the changing carbon intensity of structural materials over time, and the consideration of deterministic vs. probabilistic results. Each of these topics was explored in some detail to provide a clear pathway for future work in this area.
A photograph of street art on a building between Brighton Mall and Beresford Street.
A photograph of street art on a building between Brighton Mall and Beresford Street.
Demolition underway on a walk around the city to catch up on events happening June 25, 2014 Christchurch New Zealand.
A photograph of street art constructed against the wall of a building in New Brighton Mall. The artwork is titled, "My Hope for New Brighton", and consists of a blackboard full of messages and images from the public.
A photograph of street art constructed against the wall of a building in New Brighton Mall. The artwork is titled, "My Hope for New Brighton", and consists of a blackboard full of messages and images from the public.
Lei Zhang, a member of the University of Canterbury's E-Learning team, in their temporary office in the University Printery building. The photographer comments, "The University restarts its teaching, and the techies in e-learning move out of NZi3. We are sharing an office at the printery building. Richard Holliday and Aimee Leaning do their pre-press and outsourcing work, while Lei configures a new video streaming system".
A photograph of street art on the side of a building between Brighton Mall and Hawke Street.
A photograph of street art on the wall of a building between Brighton Mall and Hawke Street.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The Historic Post Office in Cathedral Square from the site of the Regent Theatre with the new Telecom building to the right".