Disclaimer: This blog post will mainly focus on fossicking on historic sites, as that’s what we have the greatest experience with in Christchurch. We wouldn’t be able to do justice to discussing fossicking on Māori sites, but it has occurred … Continue reading →
This article presents a subset of findings from a larger mixed methods CEISMIC1 funded study of twenty teachers’ earthquake experiences and post-earthquake adjustment eighteen months after a fatal earthquake struck Christchurch New Zealand, in the middle of a school day (Geonet Science, 2011; O’Toole & Friesen, 2016). This earthquake was a significant national and personal disaster with teachers’ emotional self-management as first responders being crucial to the students’ immediate safety (O’Toole & Friesen, 2016). At the beginning of their semi-structured interviews conducted eighteen months later, the teachers shared their earthquake stories (O’Toole & Friesen, 2016). They recalled the moment it struck in vivid detail, describing their experiences in terms of what they saw (destruction), heard (sonic boom, screaming children) and felt (fright and fear) as though they were back in that moment similar to flashbulb memory (Brown & Kulik, 1977). Their memories of the early aftermath were similarly vivid (Rubin & Kozin, 1984). This article focuses on how the mood meter (Brackett & Kremenitzer, 2011) was then used (with permission) to further explore the teachers’ perceived affect to enlighten their lived experiences.
The question of secrecy looms large over the newly announced Royal Commission into the country's security agencies. Nigel Hampton QC is a lawyer with extensive experience of top-level inquiries, including the Royal Commissions in the Pike River disaster and the Canterbury earthquakes. He talks to Guyon Espiner.
Background: There has been a psychopathology focus in disaster research examining adolescent mental health and wellbeing, but recently studies have begun to also examine wellbeing-related constructs. Although an increased risk of posttraumatic stress disorder has been established in disaster-exposed adolescents, comparatively little is known about how disasters impact adolescent wellbeing, nor how factors within the post-disaster environment interact to influence holistic adolescent mental health and wellbeing. Objective: The objective of this study was to describe the holistic mental health and wellbeing of adolescents living in an earthquake-struck city by considering a range of mental health and wellbeing indicators, as well as risk and protective factors hypothesised to influence mental health and wellbeing. The dual-factor model of mental health was used as a framework to guide this study. Method: A survey of Christchurch secondary school students was used to gather data about their subjective wellbeing, risk of low wellbeing, psychological distress, quality of life, exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences, social support from friends and family, school connectedness, and expectations about future quality of life. Results: A slim majority of students reported good subjective wellbeing (52.3%) and high current quality of life (56.4%), whereas a larger majority reported low risk of psychological distress (79%). An equal proportion of students reported high and low risk of low wellbeing. There were no statistically significant differences in any of the variables measured between adolescents who did and did not live through the Christchurch earthquakes. Regression analyses identified that school connectedness, social support from friends and family, and future expectations of quality of life significantly predicted subjective wellbeing, risk of low wellbeing, risk of psychological distress, and current quality of life. The number of Adverse Childhood Experiences significantly predicted only risk of psychological distress when the effects of other variables were controlled for. Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate that there is a low mean level of wellbeing and quality of life in this sample of adolescents living in a severely earthquake- affected community. School connectedness, social support from family and friends, and expectations about future quality of life were shown to significantly predict variance in subjective wellbeing, quality of life, and psychological distress. This suggests that there are social and environmental factors that can be targeted to improve holistic mental health and wellbeing in disaster-affected adolescents who have experienced high levels of trauma. Conclusions in this study are limited by the representativeness of the sample, the cross- sectional nature of the study, and potential sampling bias.
Background: There has been a psychopathology focus in disaster research examining adolescent mental health and wellbeing, but recently studies have begun to also examine wellbeing-related constructs. Although an increased risk of posttraumatic stress disorder has been established in disaster-exposed adolescents, comparatively little is known about how disasters impact adolescent wellbeing, nor how factors within the post-disaster environment interact to influence holistic adolescent mental health and wellbeing. Objective: The objective of this study was to describe the holistic mental health and wellbeing of adolescents living in an earthquake-struck city by considering a range of mental health and wellbeing indicators, as well as risk and protective factors hypothesised to influence mental health and wellbeing. The dual-factor model of mental health was used as a framework to guide this study. Method: A survey of Christchurch secondary school students was used to gather data about their subjective wellbeing, risk of low wellbeing, psychological distress, quality of life, exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences, social support from friends and family, school connectedness, and expectations about future quality of life. Results: A slim majority of students reported good subjective wellbeing (52.3%) and high current quality of life (56.4%), whereas a larger majority reported low risk of psychological distress (79%). An equal proportion of students reported high and low risk of low wellbeing. There were no statistically significant differences in any of the variables measured between adolescents who did and did not live through the Christchurch earthquakes. Regression analyses identified that school connectedness, social support from friends and family, and future expectations of quality of life significantly predicted subjective wellbeing, risk of low wellbeing, risk of psychological distress, and current quality of life. The number of Adverse Childhood Experiences significantly predicted only risk of psychological distress when the effects of other variables were controlled for. Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate that there is a low mean level of wellbeing and quality of life in this sample of adolescents living in a severely earthquake-affected community. School connectedness, social support from family and friends, and expectations about future quality of life were shown to significantly predict variance in subjective wellbeing, quality of life, and psychological distress. This suggests that there are social and environmental factors that can be targeted to improve holistic mental health and wellbeing in disaster-affected adolescents who have experienced high levels of trauma. Conclusions in this study are limited by the representativeness of the sample, the cross-sectional nature of the study, and potential sampling bias.
Background: There has been a psychopathology focus in disaster research examining adolescent mental health and wellbeing, but recently studies have begun to also examine wellbeing-related constructs. Although an increased risk of posttraumatic stress disorder has been established in disaster-exposed adolescents, comparatively little is known about how disasters impact adolescent wellbeing, nor how factors within the post-disaster environment interact to influence holistic adolescent mental health and wellbeing. Objective: The objective of this study was to describe the holistic mental health and wellbeing of adolescents living in an earthquake-struck city by considering a range of mental health and wellbeing indicators, as well as risk and protective factors hypothesised to influence mental health and wellbeing. The dual-factor model of mental health was used as a framework to guide this study. Method: A survey of Christchurch secondary school students was used to gather data about their subjective wellbeing, risk of low wellbeing, psychological distress, quality of life, exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences, social support from friends and family, school connectedness, and expectations about future quality of life. Results: A slim majority of students reported good subjective wellbeing (52.3%) and high current quality of life (56.4%), whereas a larger majority reported low risk of psychological distress (79%). An equal proportion of students reported high and low risk of low wellbeing. There were no statistically significant differences in any of the variables measured between adolescents who did and did not live through the Christchurch earthquakes. Regression analyses identified that school connectedness, social support from friends and family, and future expectations of quality of life significantly predicted subjective wellbeing, risk of low wellbeing, risk of psychological distress, and current quality of life. The number of Adverse Childhood Experiences significantly predicted only risk of psychological distress when the effects of other variables were controlled for. Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate that there is a low mean level of wellbeing and quality of life in this sample of adolescents living in a severely earthquake- affected community. School connectedness, social support from family and friends, and expectations about future quality of life were shown to significantly predict variance in subjective wellbeing, quality of life, and psychological distress. This suggests that there are social and environmental factors that can be targeted to improve holistic mental health and wellbeing in disaster-affected adolescents who have experienced high levels of trauma. Conclusions in this study are limited by the representativeness of the sample, the cross- sectional nature of the study, and potential sampling bias.
Christchurch Ōtautahi, New Zealand, is a city of myriad waterways and springs. Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, have water quality at the core of their cultural values. The city’s rivers include the Avon/Ōtākaro, central to the city centre’s aesthetic appeal since early settlement, and the Heathcote/Ōpāwaho. Both have been degraded with increasing urbanisation. The destructive earthquake sequence that occurred during 2010/11 presented an opportunity to rebuild significant areas of the city. Public consultation identified enthusiasm to rebuild a sustainable city. A sustainable water sensitive city is one where development is constructed with the water environment in mind. Water sensitive urban design applies at all scales and is a holistic concept. In Christchurch larger-scale multi-value stormwater management solutions were incorporated into rapidly developed greenfield sites on the city’s outskirts and in satellite towns, as they had been pre-earthquake. Individual properties on greenfield sites and within the city, however, continued to be constructed without water sensitive features such as rainwater tanks or living roofs. This research uses semi-structured interviews, policy analysis, and findings from local and international studies to investigate the benefits of building-scale WSUD and the barriers that have resulted in their absence. Although several inter-related barriers became apparent, cost, commonly cited as a barrier to sustainable development in general, was strongly represented. However, it is argued that the issue is one of mindset rather than cost. Solutions are proposed, based on international and national experience, that will demonstrate the benefits of adopting water sensitive urban design principles including at the building scale, and thereby build public and political support. The research is timely - there is still much development to occur, and increasing pressures from urban densification, population growth and climate change to mitigate.
The world experiences a number of disasters each year. Following a disaster, the affected area moves to a phase of recovery which involves multiple stakeholders. An important element of recovery is planning the rebuild of the affected environment guided by the legislative framework to which planning is bound to (March & Kornakova, 2017). Yet, there appears to be little research that has investigated the role of planners in a recovery setting and the implications of recovery legislative planning frameworks. This study was conducted to explore the role of the planner in the Canterbury earthquake recovery process in New Zealand and the impact of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act 2011 (CER Act) on planners’ roles and how they operated. The methodology comprised a combination of document analysis of legislation and related recovery material and 21 semi-structured interviews with key planners, politicians and professionals involved in the recovery. The results suggest that the majority of planners interviewed were affected by the CER Act in their role and how they operated, although institutional context, especially political constraints, was a key factor in determining the degree of impact. It is argued that planners played a key role in recovery and were generally equipped in terms of skills needed in a recovery setting. In order to better utilise planners in post-disaster recovery or disaster risk management, two suggestions are proposed. Firstly, better promote planners and their capabilities to improve awareness of what planners can do. Secondly, educate and build an understanding between central government politicians and planners over each others role to produce better planning outcomes.
School travel is a major aspect of a young person’s everyday activity. The relationship between the built environment that youth experience on their way to and from school, influences a number of factors including their development, health and wellbeing. This is especially important in low income areas where the built environment is often poorer, but the need for it to be high quality and accessible is greater. This study focusses on the community of Aranui, a relatively low income suburb in Christchurch, New Zealand. It pays particular attention to Haeata Community Campus, a state school of just under 800 pupils from year one through to year thirteen (ages 5-18). The campus opened in 2017 following the closure of four local schools (three primary and one secondary), as part of the New Zealand Government’s Education Renewal scheme following the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010/11. Dedicated effort toward understanding the local built environment, and subsequent travel patterns has been argued to be insufficiently considered. The key focus of this research was to understand the importance of the local environment in encouraging active school travel. The present study combines geospatial analysis, quantitative survey software Maptionnaire, and statistical models to explore the features of the local environment that influence school travel behaviour. Key findings suggest that distance to school and parental control are the most significant predictors of active transport in the study sample. Almost 75% of students live within two kilometres of the school, yet less than 40% utilise active transport. Parental control may be the key contributing factor to the disproportionate private vehicle use. However, active school travel is acknowledged as a complex process that is the product of many individual, household, and local environment factors. To see increased active transport uptake, the local environment needs to be of greater quality. Meaning that the built environment should be improved to be youth friendly, with greater walkability and safe, accessible cycling infrastructure.
On 14 November 2016, the Mw 7.8 Kaikōura earthquake caused widespread damage along the east coast of the South Island, New Zealand. Kaikōura town itself was isolated from the rest of the country by landslides blocking off major roads. While impacts from the Kaikōura earthquake on large, urban population centres have been generally well documented, this thesis aims to fill gaps in academic knowledge regarding small rural towns. This thesis investigates what, where and when critical infrastructure and lifeline service disruption occurred following the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake in a selection of small towns, and how the communities in these areas adapted to disruption. Following a robust review of literature and news media, four small rural towns were selected from North Canterbury (Culverden & Waiau) and Marlborough (Seddon & Ward) in the South Island, New Zealand. Semi-structured interview sessions with a special focus on these towns were held with infrastructure managers, emergency response and recovery officials, and organisation leaders with experience or expertise in the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake. Findings were supplemented with emergency management situation reports to produce hazard maps and infrastructure exposure maps. A more detailed analysis was conducted for Waiau involving interdependence analyses and a level of service timeline for select lifeline services. The earthquake impacted roads by blocking them with landslides, debris and surface rupture. Bridges where shaken off their abutments, breaking infrastructure links such as fibre landlines as they went. Water supplies and other forms of infrastructure relied heavily on the level of service of roads, as rough rural terrain left few alternatives. Adapting to an artificial loss of road service, some Waiau locals created their own detour around a road cordon in order to get home to family and farms. Performance of dwellings was tied to socioeconomic factors as much as proximity to the epicentre. Farmers who lost water access pulled out fences to allow stock to drink from rivers. Socioeconomic differences between farmland and township residents also contributed to resilience variations between the towns assessed in this study. Understanding how small rural towns respond and adapt to disaster allows emergency management officials and policy to be well informed and flexible with planning for multiple size classes of towns.
Wellington is located on a fault line which will inevitably, one day be impacted by a big earthquake. Due to where this fault line geographically sits, the central city and southern suburbs may be cut off from the rest of the region, effectively making these areas an ‘island’. This issue has absorbed a lot of attention, in particular at a large scale by many different fields: civil engineering, architecture, infrastructure planning & design, policymaking. Due to heightened awareness, and evolved school of practice, contemporary landscape architects deal with post-disaster design – Christchurch, NZ has seen this. A number of landscape architects work with nature, following increased application of ecological urbanism, and natural systems thinking, most notably at larger scales. To create parks that are designed to flood, or implement projects to protect shorelines. A form of resilience less often considered is how design for the small scale - people’s 1:1 relationship with their immediate context in exterior space - can be influential in forming a resilient response to the catastrophe of a major earthquake. This thesis intends to provide a response to address the shift of scales, as a paradigm for preparation and recovery. After a large-scale earthquake, state and civic policies and agencies may or subsequentially not go into action. The most important thinking and acting will be what happens in the minds, and the immediate needs, of each and every person; and how they act communally. This is considered in general social terms in state and civic education programmes of civil defence, for example, but much less considered in how the physical design of the actual spaces we inhabit day-to-day can educate us to be mentally prepared to help each other survive a catastrophe. Specifically, the identification of design of typologies can provide these educative functions. Typology inherently a physical form or manipulation of a generic and substantial prototype applicable in contexts is something that exists in the mind. Working with the physical and social appearance and experience of typologies can also/will change people’s minds. Socially, and economically driven, the community-building power of community gardening is well-proven and documented, and a noticeably large part of contemporary landscape architecture. The designs of this thesis will focus on community gardening specifically to form typologies of resilience preparation and response to disaster. The foundation will remain at the small scale of the local community. The specific question this thesis poses: Can we design local typologies in landscape architecture to integrate community gardens, with public space by preparing for and acting as recovery from a disaster?
Probabilistic Structural Fire Engineering (PSFE) has been introduced to overcome the limitations of current conventional approaches used for the design of fire-exposed structures. Current structural fire design investigates worst-case fire scenarios and include multiple thermal and structural analyses. PSFE permits buildings to be designed to a level of life safety or economic loss that may occur in future fire events with the help of a probabilistic approach. This thesis presents modifications to the adoption of a Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) framework in Probabilistic Structural Fire Engineering (PSFE). The probabilistic approach runs through a series of interrelationships between different variables, and successive convolution integrals of these interrelationships result in probabilities of different measures. The process starts with the definition of a fire severity measure (FSM), which best relates fire hazard intensity with structural response. It is identified by satisfying efficiency and sufficiency criteria as described by the PBEE framework. The relationship between a fire hazard and corresponding structural response is established by analysis methods. One method that has been used to quantify this relationship in PSFE is Incremental Fire Analysis (IFA). The existing IFA approach produces unrealistic fire scenarios, as fire profiles may be scaled to wide ranges of fire severity levels, which may not physically represent any real fires. Two new techniques are introduced in this thesis to limit extensive scaling. In order to obtain an annual rate of exceedance of fire hazard and structural response for an office building, an occurrence model and an attenuation model for office fires are generated for both Christchurch city and New Zealand. The results show that Christchurch city is 15% less likely to experience fires that have the potential to cause structural failures in comparison to all of New Zealand. In establishing better predictive relationships between fires and structural response, cumulative incident radiation (a fire hazard property) is found to be the most appropriate fire severity measure. This research brings together existing research on various sources of uncertainty in probabilistic structural fire engineering, such as elements affecting post-flashover fire development factors (fuel load, ventilation, surface lining and compartment geometry), fire models, analysis methods and structural reliability. Epistemic uncertainty and aleatory uncertainty are investigated in the thesis by examining the uncertainty associated with modelling and the factors that influence post-flashover development of fires. A survey of 12 buildings in Christchurch in combination with recent surveys in New Zealand produced new statistical data on post-flashover development factors in office buildings in New Zealand. The effects of these parameters on temperature-time profiles are evaluated. The effects of epistemic uncertainty due to fire models in the estimation of structural response is also calculated. Parametric fires are found to have large uncertainty in the prediction of post-flashover fires, while the BFD curves have large uncertainties in prediction of structural response. These uncertainties need to be incorporated into failure probability calculations. Uncertainty in structural modelling shows that the choices that are made during modelling have a large influence on realistic predictions of structural response.