A photograph of cracks in the driveway of a residential property in Christchurch. Planks of wood have been placed over one of the cracks and another has been filled with gravel.
A photograph of cracks running through the road of a residential street in Christchurch. The pavement has broken at the side of the road and flowers from a bush cover it.
An abandoned residential property at 15 Seabreeze Close in Bexley. The front yard and footpath are covered with weeds and silt from liquefaction. A cluster of bricks lie in the grass.
An abandoned residential property at 11 Seabreeze Close in Bexley. The front yard and footpath are covered with weeds and silt from liquefaction. "HM" has been spray-painted on the front of the house.
An abandoned residential property at 34 Waygreen Avenue in New Brighton. The front of the section is overgrown with weeds and silt from liquefaction. Cushions lie on the footpath outside the gate.
An abandoned residential property at 30 Waygreen Avenue in New Brighton. The front of The section is overgrown with weeds. An autumn tree is in full bloom at the front of the property.
Damage seen around a residential property, where a section of the wall has separated from the building. Fencing and tape have been placed around the section, and a notice on the fence says "Danger. Do not enter".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Oxford Terrace in the Avon Loop area showing the lateral spread on the river banks".
A photograph of an open sign for CIRA Coffee & Wares on a residential street in the Christchurch central city. The café was set up in a house after the 22 February 2011 earthquake.
A photograph of liquefaction and flooding on a residential property. A sign on the letterbox reads, "We are home". The photograph is captioned by Paul Corliss, "The block of Bexley and Pages Roads".
A video of residents of Arnst Place in Dallington gathering to watch John Key's announcement about the government's plans to purchase red-zoned properties.
A photograph of liquefaction and flooding on a residential property. A sign on the letterbox reads, "We are home". The photograph is captioned by Paul Corliss, "The block of Bexley and Pages Roads".
An aerial photograph of the Horseshoe Lake area, with Queensbury Street in the centre.
Damage seen around a residential property, where a section of the wall has separated from the building. Fencing and tape have been placed around the section, and a notice on the fence says "Danger. Do not enter".
Some of the most common archaeological finds related to the European settlement of New Zealand during 19th century are usually from residential occupation. Features like rubbish pits, underfloor deposits, wells (brick and artesian), cesspits, soak pits, post holes and drainage … Continue reading →
Two and a half years after some of the most badly earthquake damaged parts of Christchurch started getting cleared of residential homes, half a dozen businesses are still trying to make a go in the areas.
A Christchurch man who's made his name battling the Earthquake Commission says he has secured a forty-five-million-dollar joint venture with a Chinese company that will regenerate Christchurch's residential areas.
During recent earthquake repairs at a residential property on well-known Sumner Road in Lyttelton, our archaeologists uncovered a small assemblage of artefacts that represented everyday Victorian household items. At first glance these appeared a somewhat ordinary – but when Lydia … Continue readi...
In the period between September 2010 and December 2011, Christchurch (New Zealand) and its surroundings were hit by a series of strong earthquakes including six significant events, all generated by local faults in proximity to the city: 4 September 2010 (Mw=7.1), 22 February 2011 (Mw=6.2), 13 June 2011 (Mw=5.3 and Mw=6.0) and 23 December 2011 (M=5.8 and (M=5.9) earthquakes. As shown in Figure 1, the causative faults of the earthquakes were very close to or within the city boundaries thus generating very strong ground motions and causing tremendous damage throughout the city. Christchurch is shown as a lighter colour area, and its Central Business District (CBD) is marked with a white square area in the figure. Note that the sequence of earthquakes started to the west of the city and then propagated to the south, south-east and east of the city through a set of separate but apparently interacting faults. Because of their strength and proximity to the city, the earthquakes caused tremendous physical damage and impacts on the people, natural and built environments of Christchurch. The 22 February 2011 earthquake was particularly devastating. The ground motions generated by this earthquake were intense and in many parts of Christchurch substantially above the ground motions used to design the buildings in Christchurch. The earthquake caused 182 fatalities, collapse of two multi-storey reinforced concrete buildings, collapse or partial collapse of many unreinforced masonry structures including the historic Christchurch Cathedral. The Central Business District (CBD) of Christchurch, which is the central heart of the city just east of Hagley Park, was practically lost with majority of its 3,000 buildings being damaged beyond repair. Widespread liquefaction in the suburbs of Christchurch, as well as rock falls and slope/cliff instabilities in the Port Hills affected tens of thousands of residential buildings and properties, and shattered the lifelines and infrastructure over approximately one third of the city area. The total economic loss caused by the 2010-2011 Christchurch earthquakes is currently estimated to be in the range between 25 and 30 billion NZ dollars (or 15% to 18% of New Zealand’s GDP). After each major earthquake, comprehensive field investigations and inspections were conducted to document the liquefaction-induced land damage, lateral spreading displacements and their impacts on buildings and infrastructure. In addition, the ground motions produced by the earthquakes were recorded by approximately 15 strong motion stations within (close to) the city boundaries providing and impressive wealth of data, records and observations of the performance of ground and various types of structures during this unusual sequence of strong local earthquakes affecting a city. This paper discusses the liquefaction in residential areas and focuses on its impacts on dwellings (residential houses) and potable water system in the Christchurch suburbs. The ground conditions of Christchurch including the depositional history of soils, their composition, age and groundwater regime are first discussed. Detailed liquefaction maps illustrating the extent and severity of liquefaction across Christchurch triggered by the sequence of earthquakes including multiple episodes of severe re-liquefaction are next presented. Characteristic liquefaction-induced damage to residential houses is then described focussing on the performance of typical house foundations in areas affected by liquefaction. Liquefaction impacts on the potable water system of Christchurch is also briefly summarized including correlation between the damage to the system, liquefaction severity, and the performance of different pipe materials. Finally, the characteristics of Christchurch liquefaction and its impacts on built environment are discussed in relation to the liquefaction-induced damage in Japan during the 11 March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake.
The housing and mortgage market in Christchurch experienced significant changes since the 2011 earthquake, especially after the reconstruction of the city. The increasing speed of Christchurch average house price exceed the average house price of the whole country, as well as the number of new dwellings. By this regard, this study surveyed the households in Christchurch to analyze the effect of the earthquake on housing and mortgage market. This includes factors such as housing price, interest rate, government policy and socioeconomic factors in terms of age, gender, educational attainment, income, marital status and family life cycle. Logistic regression model is used to analyze the data. The study provides an overview of the housing market and mortgage market in Christchurch. The logistic regression, results show changes on sensitivity between the socio-economic factors and house purchase, as well as mortgage borrowing pre- and post-earthquake. The result indicates that the earthquake in Christchurch has affected households’ decision on house purchase and mortgage borrowing.
This thesis presents the application of data science techniques, especially machine learning, for the development of seismic damage and loss prediction models for residential buildings. Current post-earthquake building damage evaluation forms are developed for a particular country in mind. The lack of consistency hinders the comparison of building damage between different regions. A new paper form has been developed to address the need for a global universal methodology for post-earthquake building damage assessment. The form was successfully trialled in the street ‘La Morena’ in Mexico City following the 2017 Puebla earthquake. Aside from developing a framework for better input data for performance based earthquake engineering, this project also extended current techniques to derive insights from post-earthquake observations. Machine learning (ML) was applied to seismic damage data of residential buildings in Mexico City following the 2017 Puebla earthquake and in Christchurch following the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence (CES). The experience showcased that it is readily possible to develop empirical data only driven models that can successfully identify key damage drivers and hidden underlying correlations without prior engineering knowledge. With adequate maintenance, such models have the potential to be rapidly and easily updated to allow improved damage and loss prediction accuracy and greater ability for models to be generalised. For ML models developed for the key events of the CES, the model trained using data from the 22 February 2011 event generalised the best for loss prediction. This is thought to be because of the large number of instances available for this event and the relatively limited class imbalance between the categories of the target attribute. For the CES, ML highlighted the importance of peak ground acceleration (PGA), building age, building size, liquefaction occurrence, and soil conditions as main factors which affected the losses in residential buildings in Christchurch. ML also highlighted the influence of liquefaction on the buildings losses related to the 22 February 2011 event. Further to the ML model development, the application of post-hoc methodologies was shown to be an effective way to derive insights for ML algorithms that are not intrinsically interpretable. Overall, these provide a basis for the development of ‘greybox’ ML models.
An abandoned residential property at 37 Seabreeze Close in Bexley. Weeds are growing through the cracks in the ground and the yard has become overgrown. The garage door has been vandalised with graffiti.
A residential property in Bexley has an offensive message spray-painted on the garage door warning off intruders. The photographer comments, "Today I took a drive around the residential area between Bexley and New Brighton. It was a stark reminder to be thankful for the situation we're in and perhaps not complain too much that our garden wall hasn't yet been rebuilt ... Saddest of all are the messages that have been scrawled on walls and garage doors by departing locals. At one end of the scale, thanking the family home for the memories, and at the other end of the scale cursing the looters which have made a bad situation that much more unbearable".
A heart has been drawn in chalk on the wall of a residential property on Cannon Hill Crescent, Mt Pleasant. The time and date of the 22 February 2011 earthquake have been written inside.
A photograph of road works on a residential street in Christchurch. A digger is filling a skip while a worker in a high-visibility vest and hard hat is directing traffic along one lane.
A photograph of a residential street in Christchurch which is covered in liquefaction. In the distance a sign indicates that the speed limit is 30 kilometres an hour. To the left is a portaloo.
A photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "A damaged residential property on New Brighton road. The property is on an angle and the garage door won't shut because of damage to the building".
A photograph of a portaloo on the side of a residential street. Many houses had no water or sewerage after the 22 February 2011 earthquake and portaloos were placed along the street for people to use.
Mounds of liquefaction on the side of a residential road in eastern Christchurch. The liquefaction has been dug out of resident's gardens and placed on the road to be picked up by the City Council.
A photograph of an access hole in a residential street in Christchurch which has lifted out of the road. A road cone and spray-painted lines have been placed on top to warn road users.