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Images, UC QuakeStudies

Liquefaction silt covers the ground in front of the Shirley Medical Centre, and more silt is piled beside the entrance. The photographer comments, "These photos show our old house in River Rd and recovery work around Richmond and St Albans. The local medical centre is seriously silted up".

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A sign at ground level on a coal bunker in the University of Canterbury's Facilities Management yard reads "Squawk. Quack quack squawk. Quack quack quack quack quack. Danger. Health and safety risk. No ducklings past this point." The photographer comments, "Sign on the coal bunker at the boiler house, FM".

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Looking through the cordon fence on Worcester Boulevard towards the Cathedral. Beams propping up Our City are visible on the left, and the dome of the Regent Theatre, removed and placed on the ground to protect it from further damage, is in front of the Cathedral.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph contributed by Jennifer, a participant in the Understanding Place research project. The photograph has the description "The ground is covered in little mushrooms when you start looking, but it's hard to tell which are edible". Please note that Jennifer's Red Zone Story was a test-pilot for the Understanding Place project.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of the earthquake damage to the Loyal Benevolent Lodge on Canon Street. Bricks at the top of the façade have crumbled and fallen to the ground, bringing the awning with them. Large cracks can be seen in the remaining brick wall.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The ground floor of the IRD building on the corner of Cashel and Madras Streets, taken through the Madras Street window. The book market inside the building is almost undisturbed while next door, the CTV building collapsed.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

St John's Presbyterian Church on Winchester Street in Lyttelton. The ground around the church has been strewn with masonry from the church's walls and collapsed tower. The spire of the collapsed tower has fallen in front of the church, which has been enclosed by a safety fence.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

St John's Presbyterian Church on Winchester Street in Lyttelton. The ground around the church is strewn with masonry that has fallen from the church's walls and collapsed tower. The building's front door has been red-stickered and a sign that reads "No entry" is stuck to it.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of the earthquake damage to the Christchurch Chinese Methodist Church on Papanui Road. The gable wall has crumbled, the bricks and window frame falling onto the ground. Wire fencing has been placed around the building as a cordon.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Overview of SeisFinder SeisFinder is an open-source web service developed by QuakeCoRE and the University of Canterbury, focused on enabling the extraction of output data from computationally intensive earthquake resilience calculations. Currently, SeisFinder allows users to select historical or future events and retrieve ground motion simulation outputs for requested geographical locations. This data can be used as input for other resilience calculations, such as dynamic response history analysis. SeisFinder was developed using Django, a high-level python web framework, and uses a postgreSQL database. Because our large-scale computationally-intensive numerical ground motion simulations produce big data, the actual data is stored in file systems, while the metadata is stored in the database. The basic SeisFinder architecture is shown in Figure 1.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of the spire of ChristChurch Cathedral sitting on the ground in Cathedral Square. The photograph is captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The dry summer grass shows the passing of the seasons while the top of the spire of the ChristChurch Cathedral stays still".

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A weather-damaged Chinese lantern fallen to the ground in Victoria Square. The Chinese New Year Lantern Festival was to be held on Saturday 26 February and Sunday 27 February 2011 but was cancelled due to the earthquake. The lanterns hung in Victoria Square until they fell.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Damage to a house in Richmond. Bricks have fallen from a wall, and there is a visible gap between the foundation and the surrounding ground. The photographer comments, "The foundation and a section of the wall of the dining room have shifted and cracked. The dining room floor is very springy".

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Damage distribution maps from strong earthquakes and recorded data from field experiments have repeatedly shown that the ground surface topography and subsurface stratigraphy play a decisive role in shaping the ground motion characteristics at a site. Published theoretical studies qualitatively agree with observations from past seismic events and experiments; quantitatively, however, they systematically underestimate the absolute level of topographic amplification up to an order of magnitude or more in some cases. We have hypothesized in previous work that this discrepancy stems from idealizations of the geometry, material properties, and incident motion characteristics that most theoretical studies make. In this study, we perform numerical simulations of seismic wave propagation in heterogeneous media with arbitrary ground surface geometry, and compare results with high quality field recordings from a site with strong surface topography. Our goal is to explore whether high-fidelity simulations and realistic numerical models can – contrary to theoretical models – capture quantitatively the frequency and amplitude characteristics of topographic effects. For validation, we use field data from a linear array of nine portable seismometers that we deployed on Mount Pleasant and Heathcote Valley, Christchurch, New Zealand, and we compute empirical standard spectral ratios (SSR) and single-station horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratios (HVSR). The instruments recorded ambient vibrations and remote earthquakes for a period of two months (March-April 2017). We next perform two-dimensional wave propagation simulations using the explicit finite difference code FLAC. We construct our numerical model using a high-resolution (8m) Digital Elevation Map (DEM) available for the site, an estimated subsurface stratigraphy consistent with the geomorphology of the site, and soil properties estimated from in-situ and non-destructive tests. We subject the model to in-plane and out-of-plane incident motions that span a broadband frequency range (0.1-20Hz). Numerical and empirical spectral ratios from our blind prediction are found in very good quantitative agreement for stations on the slope of Mount Pleasant and on the surface of Heathcote Valley, across a wide range of frequencies that reveal the role of topography, soil amplification and basin edge focusing on the distribution of ground surface motion.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of the earthquake damage to a shop on Colombo Street. Part of the closest brick wall of the building has collapsed and the bricks have spilled onto the ground in front of the building. "No go" has been spray-painted on the footpath in the foreground of the photograph.