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Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

New Zealand's devastating Canterbury earthquakes provided an opportunity to examine the efficacy of existing regulations and policies relevant to seismic strengthening of vulnerable buildings. The mixed-methods approach adopted, comprising both qualitative and quantitative approaches, revealed that some of the provisions in these regulations pose as constraints to appropriate strengthening of earthquake-prone buildings. Those provisions include the current seismic design philosophy, lack of mandatory disclosure of seismic risks and ineffective timeframes for strengthening vulnerable buildings. Recommendations arising from these research findings and implications for pre-disaster mitigation for future earthquake and Canterbury's post-disaster reconstruction suggest: (1) a reappraisal of the requirements for earthquake engineering design and construction, (2) a review and realignment of all regulatory frameworks relevant to earthquake risk mitigation, and (3) the need to develop a national programme necessary to achieve consistent mitigation efforts across the country. These recommendations are important in order to present a robust framework where New Zealand communities such as Christchurch can gradually recover after a major earthquake disaster, while planning for pre-disaster mitigation against future earthquakes. AM - Accepted Manuscript

Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

Whole document is available to authenticated members of The University of Auckland until Feb. 2014. The increasing scale of losses from earthquake disasters has reinforced the need for property owners to become proactive in seismic risk reduction programs. However, despite advancement in seismic design methods and legislative frameworks, building owners are often reluctant to adopt mitigation measures required to reduce earthquake losses. The magnitude of building collapses from the recent Christchurch earthquakes in New Zealand shows that owners of earthquake prone buildings (EPBs) are not adopting appropriate risk mitigation measures in their buildings. Owners of EPBs are found unwilling or lack motivation to adopt adequate mitigation measures that will reduce their vulnerability to seismic risks. This research investigates how to increase the likelihood of building owners undertaking appropriate mitigation actions that will reduce their vulnerability to earthquake disaster. A sequential two-phase mixed methods approach was adopted for the research investigation. Multiple case studies approach was adopted in the first qualitative phase, followed by the second quantitative research phase that includes the development and testing of a framework. The research findings reveal four categories of critical obstacles to building owners‘ decision to adopt earthquake loss prevention measures. These obstacles include perception, sociological, economic and institutional impediments. Intrinsic and extrinsic interventions are proposed as incentives for overcoming these barriers. The intrinsic motivators include using information communication networks such as mass media, policy entrepreneurs and community engagement in risk mitigation. Extrinsic motivators comprise the use of four groups of incentives namely; financial, regulatory, technological and property market incentives. These intrinsic and extrinsic interventions are essential for enhancing property owners‘ decisions to voluntarily adopt appropriate earthquake mitigation measures. The study concludes by providing specific recommendations that earthquake risk mitigation managers, city councils and stakeholders involved in risk mitigation in New Zealand and other seismic risk vulnerable countries could consider in earthquake risk management. Local authorities could adopt the framework developed in this study to demonstrate a combination of incentives and motivators that yield best-valued outcomes. Consequently, actions can be more specific and outcomes more effective. The implementation of these recommendations could offer greater reasons for the stakeholders and public to invest in building New Zealand‘s built environment resilience to earthquake disasters.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A poster created by Empowered Christchurch to advertise their submission to the CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan on social media.The poster reads, "Submission, CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan. Risk Acceptance. It is the role of insurance companies, the EQC included, to accept the risks covered under their terms of reference/policies and compensate policyholders when such risks eventuate. However, many policyholders in Christchurch have not been compensated for the damage to their homes and their lives. These responsibilities need to be faced by the entities responsible. An equitable solution needs to be found for properties with hazards such as flooding that are a direct result of the earthquakes. In tandem with this, every effort must be made to protect residents from the risks posed by climate change. We need a city that is driven by the people that live in it, and enabled by a bureaucracy that accepts and mitigates risks, rather than transferring them to the most vulnerable residents".

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

With sea level rise (SLR) fast becoming one of the most pressing matters for governments worldwide, there has been mass amounts of research done on the impacts of SLR. However, these studies have largely focussed on the ways that SLR will impact both the natural and built environment, along with how the risk to low-lying coastal communities can be mitigated, while the inevitable impacts that this will have on mental well-being has been understudied. This research has attempted to determine the ways in which SLR can impact the mental well-being of those living in a low-lying coastal community, along with how these impacts could be mitigated while remaining adaptable to future environmental change. This was done through conducting an in-depth literature review to understand current SLR projections, the key components of mental well-being and how SLR can influence changes to mental well-being. This literature review then shaped a questionnaire which was distributed to residents of the New Brighton coastline. This questionnaire asked respondents how they interact with the local environment, how much they know about SLR and its associated hazards, whether SLR causes any level of stress or worry along with how respondents feel that these impacts could be mitigated. This research found that SLR impacts the mental well-being of those living in low-lying coastal communities through various methods: firstly, the respondents perceived risk to SLR and its associated hazards, which was found to be influenced by the suburbs that respondents live in, their knowledge of SLR, their main sources of information and the prior experience of the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence (CES). Secondly, the financial aspects of SLR were also found to be drivers of stress or worry, with depreciating property values and rising insurance premiums being frequently noted by respondents. It was found that the majority of respondents agreed that being involved in and informed of the protection process, having more readable and accurate information, and an increased engagement with community events and greenspaces would help to reduce the stress or worry caused by SLR, while remaining adaptable to future environmental change.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Lake Taupō in New Zealand is associated with frequent unrest and small to moderate eruptions. It presents a high consequence risk scenario with immense potential for destruction to the community and the surrounding environment. Unrest associated with eruptions may also trigger earthquakes. While it is challenging to educate people about the hazards and risks associated with multiple eruptive scenarios, effective education of students can lead to better mitigation strategies and risk reduction. Digital resources with user-directed outcomes have been successfully used to teach action oriented skills relevant for communication during volcanic crisis [4]. However, the use of choose your own adventure strategies to enhance low probability risk literacy for Secondary school outreach has not been fully explored. To investigate how digital narrative storytelling can mediate caldera risk literacy, a module “The Kid who cried Supervolcano” will be introduced in two secondary school classrooms in Christchurch and Rotorua. The module highlights four learning objectives: (a) Super-volcanoes are beautiful but can be dangerous (b) earthquake (unrest) activity is normal for super-volcanoes (c) Small eruptions are possible from super-volcanoes and can be dangerous in our lifetimes (d) Super-eruptions are unlikely in our lifetimes. Students will create their digital narrative using the platform Elementari (www.elementari.io). The findings from this study will provide clear understanding of students’ understanding of risk perceptions of volcanic eruption scenarios and associated hazards and inform the design of educational resources geared towards caldera risk literacy.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A poster created by Empowered Christchurch to advertise their submission to the CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan on social media.The poster reads, "Submission, CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan. Seismic Risk. One thing we can learn from the past is that seismic risk in Canterbury has been underestimated before the earthquakes struck. This is confirmed in a report for EQC in 1991 (paper 2005). It is also the conclusion of the Royal Commission in the CTV report. A number of recommendations have been made but not followed. For example, neither the AS/NZS 1170.5 standard nor the New Zealand Geotechnical Society guidelines have been updated. Yet another recovery instrument is the Earthquake Prone Building Act, which is still to be passed by Parliament. As the emergency response part of the recovery is now behind us, we need to ensure sustainability for what lies ahead. We need a city that is driven by the people that live in it, and enabled by a bureaucracy that accepts and mitigates risks, rather than transferring them to the most vulnerable residents."

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A poster created by Empowered Christchurch to advertise their submission to the CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan on social media.The poster reads, "Submission. CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan. After nearly five years of 'Emergency Response' where sustainability has been sacrificed in the interests of speed, we can assume that this phase is now behind us. We see no reason why this period should be extended until April 2016. Lessons must be learned from the past. It is time to move into the 'Restoration Phase'. Once seismic and building standards are corrected, and risks are notified, mapped and accepted, sustainability will be ensures. We need a city that is driven by the people that live in it, and enabled by a bureaucracy that accepts and mitigates risks, rather than transferring them to the most vulnerable residents. We support option 3+."

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A poster created by Empowered Christchurch to advertise their submission to the CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan on social media.The poster reads, "Submission, CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan. Future Insurability. In an article in the New Zealand Herald of 5 November 2014, the CEO of IAG refers to cooperation with the NZ Government on a strategic intent in 2011 to avoid depopulation of Christchurch. Now that the ICNZ has signalled its intention to withdraw from high-risk areas and the CCC also plans to redefine the boundaries of the city so as to exclude properties below the Mean High Water Springs. We ask whether a 'recovery' involves abandoning people once the insurance and bank sectors have managed a retreat? We need a city that is driven by the people that live in it, and enabled by a bureaucracy that accepts and mitigates risks, rather than transferring them to the most vulnerable of its residents".

Research Papers, Lincoln University

This research provides an investigation into the impact on the North Island freight infrastructure, in the event of a disruption of the Ports of Auckland (POAL). This research is important to New Zealand, especially having experienced the Canterbury earthquake disaster in 2010/2011 and the current 2012 industrial action plaguing the POAL. New Zealand is a net exporter of a combination of manufactured high value goods, commodity products and raw materials. New Zealand’s main challenge lies in the fact of its geographical distances to major markets. Currently New Zealand handles approximately 2 million containers per annum, with a minimum of ~40% of those containers being shipped through POAL. It needs to be highlighted that POAL is classified as an import port in comparison to Port of Tauranga (POT) that has traditionally had an export focus. This last fact is of great importance, as in a case of a disruption of the POAL, any import consigned to the Auckland and northern region will need to be redirected through POT in a quick and efficient way to reach Auckland and the northern regions. This may mean a major impact on existing infrastructure and supply chain systems that are currently in place. This study is critical as an element of risk management, looking at how to mitigate the risk to the greater Auckland region. With the new Super City taking hold, the POAL is a fundamental link in the supply chain to the largest metropolitan area within New Zealand.

Research Papers, Lincoln University

Implementing seismic risk mitigation is a major challenge in many earthquake prone regions. The objective of this research is to investigate how property investment market practices can be used to enhance building owners’ decisions to improve seismic performance of earthquake prone buildings (EPBs). A case study method adopted, revealed the impacts of the property market stakeholders’ practices on seismic retrofit decisions. The findings from this research provide significant new insights on how property market-based incentives such as such as mandatory disclosure of seismic risks in all transactions in the property market, effective awareness seismic risk program and a unified earthquake safety assessment information system, can be used to enhance EPBs owners seismic retrofit decisions. These market-based incentives offer compelling reasons for the different property market stakeholders and the public at large to retain, care, invest, and act responsibly to rehabilitate EPBs. The findings suggest need for stakeholders involved in property investment and retrofit decisions to work together to foster seismic rehabilitation of EPBs.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A poster created by Empowered Christchurch to advertise their submission to the CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan on social media.The poster reads, "Submission. CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan. 5. In your opinion, is there a better way to report on these recovery issues? Looking at the recovery from the perspective of the eastern suburbs, it is impossible to avoid thinking of phenomenon referred to as 'Disaster Capitalism' and considering the aspects that have already become evident in the recovery process. Loss of equity and quality of life, risk transfer and other substantial shifts are taking place. We suggest that a regular mini-census should be conducted through the remainder of the recovery at intervals of 6-12 months to monitor deprivation, insurance cover (or lack of it), mortgage, home equity, and rental status. If unexpected changes identified, investigation and correction measures should be implemented. We need a city that is driven by the people that live in it, and enabled by a bureaucracy that accepts and mitigates risks, rather than transferring them to the most vulnerable residents ."

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Recent tsunami events have highlighted the importance of effective tsunami risk management strategies (including land-use planning, structural and natural mitigation, warning systems, education and evacuation planning). However, the rarity of tsunami means that empirical data concerning reactions to tsunami warnings and evacuation behaviour is rare when compared to findings for evacuations from other hazards. More knowledge is required to document the full evacuation process, including responses to warnings, pre-evacuation actions, evacuation dynamics, and the return home. Tsunami evacuation modelling has the potential to inform evidence-based tsunami risk planning and response. However, to date, tsunami evacuation models have largely focused on the timings of evacuations, rather than behaviours of those evacuating. In this research, survey data was gathered from coastal communities in Banks Peninsula and Christchurch, New Zealand, relating to behaviours and actions during the November 14th 2016 Kaikōura earthquake tsunami. Survey questions asked about immediate actions following the earthquake shaking, reactions to tsunami warnings, pre-evacuation actions, evacuation dynamics and details on congestion. This data was analysed to characterise trends and identify factors that influenced evacuation actions and behaviour, and was further used to develop a realistic evacuation model prototype to evaluate the capacity of the roading network in Banks Peninsula during a tsunami evacuation. The evacuation model incorporated tsunami risk management strategies that have been implemented by local authorities, and exposure and vulnerability data, alongside the empirical data collected from the survey. This research enhances knowledge of tsunami evacuation behaviour and reactions to tsunami warnings, and can be used to refine evacuation planning to ensure that people can evacuate efficiently, thereby reducing their tsunami exposure and personal risk.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A poster created by Empowered Christchurch to advertise their submission to the CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan on social media.The poster reads, "Submission, CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan. Prime Minister Assurance. Let us remember the much-quoted assurance from the Prime Minister in 2011: 'On behalf of the Government, let me be clear that no one will be left to walk this journey alone. New Zealand will walk this journey with you. We will be there every step of the way. Christchurch; this is not your test; this is New Zealand's test. I promise we will meet this test.' We call on the authorities to live up to this promise. We need a city that is driven by the people that live in it, and enabled by a bureaucracy that accepts and mitigates risks, rather than transferring them to the most vulnerable of its residents".

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Recent surface-rupturing earthquakes in New Zealand have highlighted significant exposure and vulnerability of the road network to fault displacement. Understanding fault displacement hazard and its impact on roads is crucial for mitigating risks and enhancing resilience. There is a need for regional-scale assessments of fault displacement to identify vulnerable areas within the road network for the purposes of planning and prioritising site-specific investigations. This thesis employs updated analysis of data from three historical surface-rupturing earthquakes (Edgecumbe 1987, Darfield 2010, and Kaikoūra 2016) to develop an empirical model that addresses the gap in regional fault displacement hazard analysis. The findings contribute to understanding of • How to use seismic hazard model inputs for regional fault displacement hazard analysis • How faulting type and sediment cover affects the magnitude and spatial distribution of fault displacement • How the distribution of displacement and regional fault displacement hazard is impacted by secondary faulting • The inherent uncertainties and limitations associated with employing an empirical approach at a regional scale • Which sections of New Zealand’s roading network are most susceptible to fault displacement hazard and warrant site-specific investigations • Which regions should prioritise updating emergency management plans to account for post-event disruptions to roading. I used displacement data from the aforementioned historical ruptures to generate displacement versus distance-to-fault curves for various displacement components, fault types, and geological characteristics. Using those relationships and established relationships for along-strike displacement, displacement contours were generated surrounding active faults within the NZ Community Fault Model. Next, I calculated a new measure of 1D strain along roads as well as relative hazard, which integrated 1D strain and normalised slip rate data. Summing these values at the regional level identified areas of heightened relative hazard across New Zealand, and permits an assessment of the susceptibility of road networks using geomorphon land classes as proxies for vulnerability. The results reveal that fault-parallel displacements tend to localise near the fault plane, while vertical and fault-perpendicular displacements sustain over extended distances. Notably, no significant disparities were observed in off-fault displacement between the hanging wall and footwall sides of the fault, or among different surface geology types, potentially attributed to dataset biases. The presence of secondary faulting in the dataset contributes to increased levels of tectonic displacement farther from the fault, highlighting its significance in hazard assessments. Furthermore, fault displacement contours delineate broader zones around dip-slip faults compared to strike-slip faults, with correlations identified between fault length and displacement width. Road ‘strain’ values are higher around dip-slip faults, with notable examples observed in the Westland and Buller Districts. As expected, relative hazard analysis revealed elevated values along faults with high slip rates, notably along the Alpine Fault. A regional-scale analysis of hazard and exposure reveals heightened relative hazard in specific regions, including Wellington, Southern Hawke’s Bay, Central Bay of Plenty, Central West Coast, inland Canterbury, and the Wairau Valley of Marlborough. Notably, the Central West Coast exhibits the highest summed relative hazard value, attributed to the fast-slipping Alpine Fault. The South Island generally experiences greater relative hazard due to larger and faster-slipping faults compared to the North Island, despite having fewer roads. Central regions of New Zealand face heightened risk compared to Southern or Northern regions. Critical road links intersecting high-slipping faults, such as State Highways 6, 73, 1, and 2, necessitate prioritisation for site-specific assessments, emergency management planning and targeted mitigation strategies. Roads intersecting with the Alpine Fault are prone to large parallel displacements, requiring post-quake repair efforts. Mitigation strategies include future road avoidance of nearby faults, modification of road fill and surface material, and acknowledgement of inherent risk, leading to prioritised repair efforts of critical roads post-quake. Implementing these strategies enhances emergency response efforts by improving accessibility to isolated regions following a major surface-rupturing event, facilitating faster supply delivery and evacuation assistance. This thesis contributes to the advancement of understanding fault displacement hazard by introducing a novel regional, empirical approach. The methods and findings highlight the importance of further developing such analyses and extending them to other critical infrastructure types exposed to fault displacement hazard in New Zealand. Enhancing our comprehension of the risks associated with fault displacement hazard offers valuable insights into various mitigation strategies for roading infrastructure and informs emergency response planning, thereby enhancing both national and global infrastructure resilience against geological hazards.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Tsunami events including the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami confirmed the need for Pacific-wide comprehensive risk mitigation and effective tsunami evacuation planning. New Zealand is highly exposed to tsunamis and continues to invest in tsunami risk awareness, readiness and response across the emergency management and science sectors. Evacuation is a vital risk reduction strategy for preventing tsunami casualties. Understanding how people respond to warnings and natural cues is an important element to improving evacuation modelling techniques. The relative rarity of tsunami events locally in Canterbury and also globally, means there is limited knowledge on tsunami evacuation behaviour, and tsunami evacuation planning has been largely informed by hurricane evacuations. This research aims to address this gap by analysing evacuation behaviour and movements of Kaikōura and Southshore/New Brighton (coastal suburb of Christchurch) residents following the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake. Stage 1 of the research is engaging with both these communities and relevant hazard management agencies, using a survey and community workshops to understand real-event evacuation behaviour during the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake and subsequent tsunami evacuations. The second stage is using the findings from stage 1 to inform an agent-based tsunami evacuation model, which is an approach that simulates of the movement of people during an evacuation response. This method improves on other evacuation modelling approaches to estimate evacuation times due to better representation of local population characteristics. The information provided by the communities will inform rules and interactions such as traffic congestion, evacuation delay times and routes taken to develop realistic tsunami evacuation models. This will allow emergency managers to more effectively prepare communities for future tsunami events, and will highlight recommended actions to increase the safety and efficiency of future tsunami evacuations.

Research papers, Victoria University of Wellington

A natural disaster will inevitably strike New Zealand in the coming years, damaging educational facilities. Delays in building quality replacement facilities will lead to short-term disruption of education, risking long-term inequalities for the affected students. The Christchurch earthquake demonstrated the issues arising from a lack of school planning and support. This research proposes a system that can effectively provide rapid, prefabricated, primary schools in post-disaster environments. The aim is to continue education for children in the short term, while using construction that is suitable until the total replacement of the given school is completed. The expandable prefabricated architecture meets the strength, time, and transport requirements to deliver a robust, rapid relief temporary construction. It is also adaptable to any area within New Zealand. This design solution supports personal well-being and mitigates the risk of educational gaps, PTSD linked with anxiety and depression, and many other mental health disorders that can impact students and teachers after a natural disaster.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Landslides are significant hazards, especially in seismically-active mountainous regions, where shaking amplified by steep topography can result in widespread landsliding. These landslides present not only an acute hazard, but a chronic hazard that can last years-to-decades after the initial earthquake, causing recurring impacts. The Mw 7.8 Kaikōura earthquake caused more than 20,000 landslides throughout North Canterbury and resulted in significant damage to nationally significant infrastructure in the coastal transport corridor (CTC), isolating Kaikōura from the rest of New Zealand. In the years following, ongoing landsliding triggered by intense rainfall exacerbated the impacts and slowed the recovery process. However, while there is significant research on co-seismic landslides and their initial impacts in New Zealand, little research has explored the evolution of co-seismic landslides and how this hazard changes over time. This research maps landslides annually between 2013 and 2021 to evaluate the changes in pre-earthquake, co-seismic and post-earthquake rates of landsliding to determine how landslide hazard has changed over this time. In particular, the research explores how the number, area, and spatial distribution of landslides has changed since the earthquake, and whether post-earthquake mitigation works have in any way affected the long-term landslide hazard. Mapping of landslides was undertaken using open-source, medium resolution Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, with landslides identified visually and mapped as single polygons that capture both the source zone and deposit. Three study areas with differing levels of post-earthquake mitigation are compared: (i) the northern CTC, where the majority of mitigation was in the form of active debris removal; (ii) the southern CTC, where mitigation was primarily via passive protection measures; and (iii) Mount Fyffe, which has had no mitigation works since the earthquake. The results show that despite similar initial impacts during the earthquake, the rate of recovery in terms of landslide rates varies substantially across the three study areas. In Mount Fyffe, the number and area of landslides could take 45 and 22 years from 2021 respectively to return to pre-earthquake levels at the current rate. Comparatively, in the CTC, it could take just 5 years and 3-4 years from 2021 respectively. Notably, the fastest recovery in terms of landslide rates in the CTC was primarily located directly along the transport network, whereas what little recovery did occur in Mount Fyffe appeared to follow no particular pattern. Importantly, recovery rates in the northern CTC were notably higher than in the southern CTC, despite greater co-seismic impacts in the former. Combined, these results suggest the active, debris removal mitigation undertaken in the northern CTC may have had the effect of dramatically reducing the time for landslide rates to return to pre-earthquake levels. The role of slope angle and slope aspect were explored to evaluate if these observations could be driven by local differences in topography. The Mount Fyffe study area has higher slope angles than the CTC as a whole and landslides predominantly occurred on slightly steeper slopes than in the CTC. This may have contributed to the longer recovery times for landsliding in Mount Fyffe due to greater gravitational instability, however the observed variations are minor compared to the differences in recovery rates. In terms of slope aspect, landslides in Mount Fyffe preferentially occurred on north- and south-facing slopes whereas landslides in the CTC preferred the east- and south-facing slopes. The potential role of these differences in landslide recovery remains unclear but may be related to the propagation direction of the earthquake and the tracking direction of post-earthquake ex-tropical cyclones. Finally, landslides in the CTC are observed to be moving further away from the transport network and the number of landslides impacting the CTC decreased significantly since the earthquake. Nevertheless, the potential for further landslide reactivation remains. Therefore, despite the recovery in the CTC, it is clear that there is still risk of the transport network being impacted by further landsliding, at least for the next 3-5 yrs.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A poster created by Empowered Christchurch to advertise their submission to the CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan on social media.The poster reads, "Submission. CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan. 5. In your opinion, is there a better way to report on these recovery issues? We believe that, as regards residential recovery, monitoring should extend to code compliance certificates. According to figures published in 2014, only factions of repairs/rebuilds are completed with the issue of a code compliance certificate. To conclude the work to the required standard, someone must pay for the code compliance. Leaving things as they are could have serious negative consequences for the recovery and for the city as a whole. We suggest an investigation of number of outstanding code compliance certificates and that responsible parties are made to address this outstanding work. We need a city that is driven by the people that live in it, and enabled by a bureaucracy that accepts and mitigates risks, rather than transferring them to the most vulnerable residents."

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

This article argues that active coordination of research engagement after disasters has the potential to maximize research opportunities, improve research quality, increase end-user engagement, and manage escalating research activity to mitigate ethical risks posed to impacted populations. The focus is on the coordination of research activity after the 22nd February 2011 Mw6.2 Christchurch earthquake by the then newly-formed national research consortium, the Natural Hazards Research Platform, which included a social science research moratorium during the declared state of national emergency. Decisions defining this organisation’s functional and structural parameters are analyzed to identify lessons concerning the need for systematic approaches to the management of post disaster research, in collaboration with the response effort. Other lessons include the importance of involving an existing, broadly-based research consortium, ensuring that this consortium's coordination role is fully integrated into emergency management structures, and ensuring that all aspects of decision-making processes are transparent and easily accessed.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

From 2010, Canterbury, a province of Aotearoa New Zealand, experienced three major disaster events. This study considers the socio-ecological impacts on cross-sectoral suicide prevention agencies and their service users of the 2010 – 2016 Canterbury earthquake sequence, the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic in Canterbury. This study found the prolonged stress caused by these events contributed to a rise in suicide risk factors including anxiety, fear, trauma, distress, alcohol misuse, relationship breakdown, childhood adversity, economic loss and deprivation. The prolonged negative comment by the media on wellbeing in Canterbury was also unhelpful and affected morale. The legacy of these impacts was a rise in referrals to mental health services that has not diminished. This adversity in the socio-ecological system also produced post-traumatic growth, allowing Cantabrians to acquire resilience and help-seeking abilities to support them psychologically through the COVID-19 pandemic. Supporting parental and teacher responses, intergenerational support and targeted public health campaigns, as well as Māori family-centred programmes, strengthened wellbeing. The rise in suicide risk led to the question of what services were required and being delivered in Canterbury and how to enable effective cross-sectoral suicide prevention in Canterbury, deemed essential in all international and national suicide prevention strategies. Components from both the World Health Organisation Suicide Prevention Framework (WHO, 2012; WHO 2021) and the Collective Impact model (Hanleybrown et al., 2012) were considered by participants. The effectiveness of dynamic leadership and the essential conditions of resourcing a supporting agency were found as were the importance of processes that supported equity, lived experience and the partnership of Māori and non-Māori stakeholders. Cross-sectoral suicide prevention was found to enhance the wellbeing of participants, hastening learning, supporting innovation and raising awareness across sectors which might lower stigma. Effective communication was essential in all areas of cross-sectoral suicide prevention and clear action plans enabled measurement of progress. Identified components were combined to create a Collective Impact Suicide Prevention framework that strengthens suicide prevention implementation and can be applied at a local, regional and national level. This study contributes to cross-sectoral suicide prevention planning by considering the socio- ecological, policy and practice mitigations required to lower suicide risk and to increase wellbeing and post-traumatic growth, post-disaster. This study also adds to the growing awareness of the contribution that social work can provide to suicide prevention and conceptualises an alternative governance framework and practice and policy suggestions to support effective cross-sectoral suicide prevention.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Natural catastrophes are increasing worldwide. They are becoming more frequent but also more severe and impactful on our built environment leading to extensive damage and losses. Earthquake events account for the smallest part of natural events; nevertheless seismic damage led to the most fatalities and significant losses over the period 1981-2016 (Munich Re). Damage prediction is helpful for emergency management and the development of earthquake risk mitigation projects. Recent design efforts focused on the application of performance-based design engineering where damage estimation methodologies use fragility and vulnerability functions. However, the approach does not explicitly specify the essential criteria leading to economic losses. There is thus a need for an improved methodology that finds the critical building elements related to significant losses. The here presented methodology uses data science techniques to identify key building features that contribute to the bulk of losses. It uses empirical data collected on site during earthquake reconnaissance mission to train a machine learning model that can further be used for the estimation of building damage post-earthquake. The first model is developed for Christchurch. Empirical building damage data from the 2010-2011 earthquake events is analysed to find the building features that contributed the most to damage. Once processed, the data is used to train a machine-learning model that can be applied to estimate losses in future earthquake events.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

The Canterbury Earthquake Sequence (CES), induced extensive damage in residential buildings and led to over NZ$40 billion in total economic losses. Due to the unique insurance setting in New Zealand, up to 80% of the financial losses were insured. Over the CES, the Earthquake Commission (EQC) received more than 412,000 insurance claims for residential buildings. The 4 September 2010 earthquake is the event for which most of the claims have been lodged with more than 138,000 residential claims for this event only. This research project uses EQC claim database to develop a seismic loss prediction model for residential buildings in Christchurch. It uses machine learning to create a procedure capable of highlighting critical features that affected the most buildings loss. A future study of those features enables the generation of insights that can be used by various stakeholders, for example, to better understand the influence of a structural system on the building loss or to select appropriate risk mitigation measures. Previous to the training of the machine learning model, the claim dataset was supplemented with additional data sourced from private and open access databases giving complementary information related to the building characteristics, seismic demand, liquefaction occurrence and soil conditions. This poster presents results of a machine learning model trained on a merged dataset using residential claims from the 4 September 2010.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

New Zealand has a long tradition of using light timber frame for construction of its domestic dwellings. After the most recent earthquakes (e.g. Canterbury earthquakes sequence), wooden residential houses showed satisfactory life safety performance. However, poor performance was reported in terms of their seismic resilience. Although numerous innovative methods to mitigate damage have been introduced to the New Zealand community in order to improve wooden house performance, these retrofit options have not been readily taken up. The low number of retrofitted wooden-framed houses leads to questions about whether homeowners are aware of the necessity of seismic retrofitting their houses to achieve a satisfactory seismic performance. This study aims to explore different retrofit technologies that can be applied to wooden-framed houses in Wellington, taking into account the need of homeowners to understand the risk, likelihood and extent of damage expected after an event. A survey will be conducted in Wellington about perceptions of homeowners towards the expected performance of their wooden-framed houses. The survey questions were designed to gain an understanding of homeowners' levels of safety and awareness of possible damage after a seismic event. Afterwards, a structural review of a sample of the houses will be undertaken to identify common features and detail potential seismic concerns. The findings will break down barriers to making improvements in the performance of wooden-framed houses and lead to enhancements in the confidence of homeowners in the event of future seismic activity. This will result in increased understanding and contribute towards an accessible knowledge base, which will possibly increase significantly the use of these technologies and avoid unnecessary economic and social costs after a seismic event.

Research Papers, Lincoln University

Today there is interest in building resilient communities. Identifying and managing the risks of natural hazards with communities who face compounding hazards is challenging. Alpine ski areas provide a unique context to study this challenging and complex process. The traditional approach taken to manage natural hazards is discipline-centric and focuses on common (e.g. high probability low consequence) natural hazards such as avalanches. While this thesis acknowledges that the common approach is rational, it argues that we can extend our communities of practice to include rare (e.g. low probability / high consequence) natural hazards such as earthquakes. The dynamically complex nature of these ‘rare’ hazards limits our understanding about them, but by seeking and using the lived experiences of people in mountain communities some knowledge can be gained to help improve our understanding of how to adapt. This study focuses on such an approach in the context of alpine ski areas prone to earthquakes as a first step toward identifying key policy opportunities for hazard mitigation in general. The contributions can be broken down into methodological, contextual, and theoretical pursuits, as well as opportunities for improving future research. A development mixed method triangulated approach was justified because the research problem (i.e. earthquakes in ski areas) has had little consideration. The context provided the opportunity to test the integration of methods while dealing with the challenges of research in a novel context. Advancement to fuzzy cognitive mapping was achieved through the use of unsupervised neural networks (Self-organizing Maps or Kohonen Maps). The framework applied in the multi-site case study required a synthesis of current approaches, advances to methods and a functional use of cultural theory. Different approaches to participatory policy development were reviewed to develop a research protocol that was accessible. Cultural theory was selected as a foundation for the thesis because of its’ preference for plural rationalities from five ways of organizing. Moreover, the study undertook a shift away from the dichotomy of ‘methodological individualism’ and ‘methodological collectivism’ and instead chose the dividual (i.e. social solidarities that consist of culural biases, behavioral strategies and social relations) as a consistent unit of analysis despite three different methodologies including: field studies, qualitative interviews, and fuzzy cognitive maps. In this sense, the thesis sought to move away from ‘elegant solutions’ from singular solidarities or methods toward a research philosophy that sustains requisite variety and clumsy solutions. Overall the approach was a trandisciplinary framework that is a step toward sustainable hazards mitigation. The results indicate that the selections of risks and adaptation strategies associated with the in-situ hazards are driven by roles that managers, workers, and riders play in the context. Additionally, fuzzy cognitive maps were used as an extension of qualitative interviews and demonstrated the potential for power struggles that may arise between participant groups when considering strategies for preparation, response and recovery. Moreover, the results stress that prolonged engagement with stakeholders is necessary to improve the policy development process. Some comments are made on the compatibility condition of congruence between cultural biases, behavioural strategies, and social relations. As well, inclusion of the hermit/autonomous solidarities is stressed as a necessary component of future applications of cultural theory. The transdisciplinary mixed-method framework is an approach that can be transferred to many other vital areas of research where integration is desirable.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Natural hazard disasters often have large area-wide impacts, which can cause adverse stress-related mental health outcomes in exposed populations. As a result, increased treatment-seeking may be observed, which puts a strain on the limited public health care resources particularly in the aftermath of a disaster. It is therefore important for public health care planners to know whom to target, but also where and when to initiate intervention programs that promote emotional wellbeing and prevent the development of mental disorders after catastrophic events. A large body of literature assesses factors that predict and mitigate disaster-related mental disorders at various time periods, but the spatial component has rarely been investigated in disaster mental health research. This thesis uses spatial and spatio-temporal analysis techniques to examine when and where higher and lower than expected mood and anxiety symptom treatments occurred in the severely affected Christchurch urban area (New Zealand) after the 2010/11 Canterbury earthquakes. High-risk groups are identified and a possible relationship between exposure to the earthquakes and their physical impacts and mood and anxiety symptom treatments is assessed. The main research aim is to test the hypothesis that more severely affected Christchurch residents were more likely to show mood and anxiety symptoms when seeking treatment than less affected ones, in essence, testing for a dose-response relationship. The data consisted of mood and anxiety symptom treatment information from the New Zealand Ministry of Health’s administrative databases and demographic information from the National Health Index (NHI) register, when combined built a unique and rich source for identifying publically funded stress-related treatments for mood and anxiety symptoms in almost the whole population of the study area. The Christchurch urban area within the Christchurch City Council (CCC) boundary was the area of interest in which spatial variations in these treatments were assessed. Spatial and spatio-temporal analyses were done by applying retrospective space-time and spatial variation in temporal trends analysis using SaTScan™ software, and Bayesian hierarchical modelling techniques for disease mapping using WinBUGS software. The thesis identified an overall earthquake-exposure effect on mood and anxiety symptom treatments among Christchurch residents in the context of the earthquakes as they experienced stronger increases in the risk of being treated especially shortly after the catastrophic 2011 Christchurch earthquake compared to the rest of New Zealand. High-risk groups included females, elderly, children and those with a pre-existing mental illness with elderly and children especially at-risk in the context of the earthquakes. Looking at the spatio-temporal distribution of mood and anxiety symptom treatments in the Christchurch urban area, a high rates cluster ranging from the severely affected central city to the southeast was found post-disaster. Analysing residential exposure to various earthquake impacts found that living in closer proximity to more affected areas was identified as a risk factor for mood and anxiety symptom treatments, which largely confirms a dose-response relationship between level of affectedness and mood and anxiety symptom treatments. However, little changes in the spatial distribution of mood and anxiety symptom treatments occurred in the Christchurch urban area over time indicating that these results may have been biased by pre-existing spatial disparities. Additionally, the post-disaster mobility activity from severely affected eastern to the generally less affected western and northern parts of the city seemed to have played an important role as the strongest increases in treatment rates occurred in less affected northern areas of the city, whereas the severely affected eastern areas tended to show the lowest increases. An investigation into the different effects of mobility confirmed that within-city movers and temporary relocatees were generally more likely to receive care or treatment for mood or anxiety symptoms, but moving within the city was identified as a protective factor over time. In contrast, moving out of the city from minor, moderately or severely damaged plain areas of the city, which are generally less affluent than Port Hills areas, was identified as a risk factor in the second year post-disaster. Moreover, residents from less damaged plain areas of the city showed a decrease in the likelihood of receiving care or treatment for mood or anxiety symptoms compared to those from undamaged plain areas over time, which also contradicts a possible dose-response relationship. Finally, the effects of the social and physical environment, as well as community resilience on mood and anxiety symptom treatments among long-term stayers from Christchurch communities indicate an exacerbation of pre-existing mood and anxiety symptom treatment disparities in the city, whereas exposure to ‘felt’ earthquake intensities did not show a statistically significant effect. The findings of this thesis highlight the complex relationship between different levels of exposure to a severe natural disaster and adverse mental health outcomes in a severely affected region. It is one of the few studies that have access to area-wide health and impact information, are able to do a pre-disaster / post-disaster comparison and track their sample population to apply spatial and spatio-temporal analysis techniques for exposure assessment. Thus, this thesis enhances knowledge about the spatio-temporal distribution of adverse mental health outcomes in the context of a severe natural disaster and informs public health care planners, not only about high-risk groups, but also where and when to target health interventions. The results indicate that such programs should broadly target residents living in more affected areas as they are likely to face daily hardship by living in a disrupted environment and may have already been the most vulnerable ones before the disaster. Special attention should be focussed on women, elderly, children and people with pre-existing mental illnesses as they are most likely to receive care or treatment for stress-related mental health symptoms. Moreover, permanent relocatees from affected areas and temporarily relocatees shortly after the disaster may need special attention as they face additional stressors due to the relocation that may lead to the development of adverse mental health outcomes needing treatment.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Farming and urban regions are impacted by earthquake disasters in different ways, and feature a range of often different recovery requirements. In New Zealand, and elsewhere, most earthquake impact and recovery research is urban focused. This creates a research deficit that can lead to the application of well-researched urban recovery strategies in rural areas to suboptimal effect. To begin to reduce this deficit, in-depth case studies of the earthquake impacts and recovery of three New Zealand farms severely impacted by the 14th November 2016, M7.8 Hurunui-Kaikōura earthquake were conducted. The initial earthquake, its aftershocks and coseismic hazards (e.g., landslides, liquefaction, surface rupture) affected much of North Canterbury, Marlborough and the Wellington area. The three case study farms were chosen to broadly represent the main types of farming and topography in the Hurunui District in North Canterbury. The farms were directly and indirectly impacted by earthquakes and related hazards. On-farm infrastructure (e.g., woolsheds, homesteads) and essential services (e.g., water, power), frequently sourced from distributed networks, were severely impacted. The earthquake occurred after two years of regional drought had already stressed farm systems and farmers to restructuring or breaking point. Cascading interlinked hazards stemming from the earthquakes and coseismic hazards continued to disrupt earthquake recovery over a year after the initial earthquake. Semi-structured interviews with the farmers were conducted nine and fourteen months after the initial earthquake to capture the timeline of on-going impacts and recovery. Analysis of both geological hazard data and interview data resulted in the identification of key factors influencing farm level earthquake impact and recovery. These include pre-existing conditions (e.g., drought); farm-specific variations in recovery timelines; and resilience strategies for farm recovery resources. The earthquake recovery process presented all three farms with opportunities to change their business plans and adapt to mitigate on-going and future risk.

Research Papers, Lincoln University

Environmental assessment in New Zealand is governed by the provisions of the Resource Management Act (RMA) 1991. The Act requires persons wishing to undertake certain activities to apply for resource consent from their local or regional council - a procedure termed the Resource Consent Process. The key component of a resource consent application is an Assessment of Environmental Effects (AEE) report; a statement of the environmental effects of a proposed activity. Problems arise when environmental assessments are complicated by uncertain and abnormal circumstances such as natural hazards. Natural hazards (including earthquakes, floods, tsunami, and coastal erosion) can be catastrophic to an environment. If hazards are not avoided or successfully mitigated, they can result in serious consequences to proposed development and to the environment which the proposal relates. The aim of this study is to assess the adequacy of the resource consent process (as outlined in the Resource Management Act 1991) for dealing with proposed development affected by natural hazards. This study reviews the context of the resource consent process for dealing with natural hazards to identify potential issues in the assessment process. Guidance criteria for assessing natural hazards (termed Natural Hazard Assessment) are developed to evaluate against two resource consent applications affected by natural hazards. The findings of the consent process review and case study evaluation are discussed to determine the adequacy of the consent process for dealing with natural hazards. From the review of the consent process it was evident that the process has a number of problems for accommodating natural hazards into the assessment. Although many important traits are provided for in the process, such traits are not always reflected in environmental assessments. Evaluation of two resource consent applications against the process of Natural Hazard Assessment (NHA) showed that these consent applications did not adequately detail key information relating to natural hazards. Many problems evident in these applications were not amended by the Consent Authorities in the review process and subsequently consent was granted to information-deficient applications. Problematic issues identified in this study include: • A distinct lack of guidance (legal or otherwise) for the applicant and Consent Authority regarding the boundaries of inclusion of an effect; • Deficiencies in planning documents are reflected in AEE reports, the review of the consent application and in the end-decision; • Under-utilisation of "experts" throughout the consent process; • Minimal identification and account for the degree of uncertainty throughout the consent process; • Resource consents are being granted even though information in consent applications, and the means for assessing the information is deficient. These issues reflect that decisions are not being made based on all elements involved in a potential hazard. Subsequently, the resource consent process is not adequate for dealing with all aspects of natural hazards. The Natural Hazard Assessment process provides educated assessment criteria to assess development affected by natural hazards. By accounting for the problems evident in the consent process, the introduction of a three-tier identification, risk and vulnerability assessment, and evaluation process to account for uncertainties, Natural Hazard Assessment provides a platform for a thorough assessment of natural hazards. The application of the principles of Natural Hazard Assessment to the consent applications affected by natural hazards showed that many key issues were not covered in the assessment under the consent process. The nature of a natural event is that one may not occur in a given region over many lifetimes, however they will occur at some stage and planning and environmental assessment needs to provide for the associated hazards. Implementation of Natural Hazard Assessment is needed to help provide answers for the problems experienced in the resource consent process. Natural Hazard Assessment would allow decision-makers to make informed judgements on the situation at hand, leading to better planning and land-use options. Change to current practice is needed, as following the current path of environmental assessment will be the hazard in the end.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Sewerage systems convey sewage, or wastewater, from residential or commercial buildings through complex reticulation networks to treatment plants. During seismic events both transient ground motion and permanent ground deformation can induce physical damage to sewerage system components, limiting or impeding the operability of the whole system. The malfunction of municipal sewerage systems can result in the pollution of nearby waterways through discharge of untreated sewage, pose a public health threat by preventing the use of appropriate sanitation facilities, and cause serious inconvenience for rescuers and residents. Christchurch, the second largest city in New Zealand, was seriously affected by the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence (CES) in 2010-2011. The CES imposed widespread damage to the Christchurch sewerage system (CSS), causing a significant loss of functionality and serviceability to the system. The Christchurch City Council (CCC) relied heavily on temporary sewerage services for several months following the CES. The temporary services were supported by use of chemical and portable toilets to supplement the damaged wastewater system. The rebuild delivery agency -Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (SCIRT) was created to be responsible for repair of 85 % of the damaged horizontal infrastructure (i.e., water, wastewater, stormwater systems, and roads) in Christchurch. Numerous initiatives to create platforms/tools aiming to, on the one hand, support the understanding, management and mitigation of seismic risk for infrastructure prior to disasters, and on the other hand, to support the decision-making for post-disaster reconstruction and recovery, have been promoted worldwide. Despite this, the CES in New Zealand highlighted that none of the existing platforms/tools are either accessible and/or readable or usable by emergency managers and decision makers for restoring the CSS. Furthermore, the majority of existing tools have a sole focus on the engineering perspective, while the holistic process of formulating recovery decisions is based on system-wide approach, where a variety of factors in addition to technical considerations are involved. Lastly, there is a paucity of studies focused on the tools and frameworks for supporting decision-making specifically on sewerage system restoration after earthquakes. This thesis develops a decision support framework for sewerage pipe and system restoration after earthquakes, building on the experience and learning of the organisations involved in recovering the CSS following the CES in 2010-2011. The proposed decision support framework includes three modules: 1) Physical Damage Module (PDM); 2) Functional Impact Module (FIM); 3) Pipeline Restoration Module (PRM). The PDM provides seismic fragility matrices and functions for sewer gravity and pressure pipelines for predicting earthquake-induced physical damage, categorised by pipe materials and liquefaction zones. The FIM demonstrates a set of performance indicators that are categorised in five domains: structural, hydraulic, environmental, social and economic domains. These performance indicators are used to assess loss of wastewater system service and the induced functional impacts in three different phases: emergency response, short-term recovery and long-term restoration. Based on the knowledge of the physical and functional status-quo of the sewerage systems post-earthquake captured through the PDM and FIM, the PRM estimates restoration time of sewer networks by use of restoration models developed using a Random Forest technique and graphically represented in terms of restoration curves. The development of a decision support framework for sewer recovery after earthquakes enables decision makers to assess physical damage, evaluate functional impacts relating to hydraulic, environmental, structural, economic and social contexts, and to predict restoration time of sewerage systems. Furthermore, the decision support framework can be potentially employed to underpin system maintenance and upgrade by guiding system rehabilitation and to monitor system behaviours during business-as-usual time. In conjunction with expert judgement and best practices, this framework can be moreover applied to assist asset managers in targeting the inclusion of system resilience as part of asset maintenance programmes.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

A buckling-restrained braced frame (BRBF) is a structural bracing system that provides lateral strength and stiffness to buildings and bridges. They were first developed in Japan in the 1970s (Watanabe et al. 1973, Kimura et al. 1976) and gained rapid acceptance in the United States after the Northridge earthquake in 1994 (Bruneau et al. 2011). However, it was not until the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010/2011, that the New Zealand construction market saw a significant uptake in the use of buckling-restrained braces (BRBs) in commercial buildings (MacRae et al. 2015). In New Zealand there is not yet any documented guidance or specific instructions in regulatory standards for the design of BRBFs. This makes it difficult for engineers to anticipate all the possible stability and strength issues within a BRBF system and actively mitigate them in each design. To help ensure BRBF designs perform as intended, a peer review with physical testing are needed to gain building compliance in New Zealand. Physical testing should check the manufacturing and design of each BRB (prequalification testing), and the global strength and stability of each BRB its frame (subassemblage testing). However, the financial pressures inherent in commercial projects has led to prequalification testing (BRB only testing) being favoured without adequate design specific subassemblage testing. This means peer reviewers have to rely on BRB suppliers for assurances. This low regulation environment allows for a variety of BRBF designs to be constructed without being tested or well understood. The concern is that there may be designs that pose risk and that issues are being overlooked in design and review. To improve the safety and design of BRBFs in New Zealand, this dissertation studies the behaviour of BRBs and how they interact with other frame components. Presented is the experimental test process and results of five commercially available BRB designs (Chapter 2). It discusses the manufacturing process, testing conditions and limitations of observable information. It also emphasises that even though subassemblage testing is impractical, uniaxial testing of the BRB only is not enough, as this does not check global strength or stability. As an alternative to physical testing, this research uses computer simulation to model BRB behaviour. To overcome the traditional challenges of detailed BRB modelling, a strategy to simulate the performance of generic BRB designs was developed (Chapter 3). The development of nonlinear material and contact models are important aspects of this strategy. The Chaboche method is employed using a minimum of six backstress curves to characterize the combined isotropic and kinematic hardening exhibited by the steel core. A simplified approach, adequate for modelling the contact interaction between the restrainer and the core was found. Models also capture important frictional dissipation as well as lateral motion and bending associated with high order constrained buckling of the core. The experimental data from Chapter 2 was used to validate this strategy. As BRBs resist high compressive loading, global stability of the BRB and gusseted connection zone need to be considered. A separate study was conducted that investigated the yielding and buckling strength of gusset plates (Chapter 4). The stress distribution through a gusset plate is complex and difficult to predict because the cross-sectional area of gusset plate is not uniform, and each gusset plate design is unique in shape and size. This has motivated design methods that approximate yielding of gusset plates. Finite element modelling was used to study the development of yielding, buckling and plastic collapse behaviour of a brace end bolted to a series of corner gusset plates. In total 184 variations of gusset plate geometries were modelled in Abaqus®. The FEA modelling applied monotonic uniaxial load with an imperfection. Upon comparing results to current gusset plate design methods, it was found that the Whitmore width method for calculating the yield load of a gusset is generally un-conservative. To improve accuracy and safety in the design of gusset plates, modifications to current design methods for calculating the yield area and compressive strength for gusset plates is proposed. Bolted connections are a popular and common connection type used in BRBF design. Global out-of-plane stability tends to govern the design for this connection type with numerous studies highlighting the risk of instability initiated by inelasticity in the gussets, neck of the BRB end and/or restrainer ends. Subassemblage testing is the traditional method for evaluating global stability. However, physical testing of every BRBF variation is cost prohibitive. As such, Japan has developed an analytical approach to evaluate out-of-plane stability of BRBFs and incorporated this in their design codes. This analytical approach evaluates the different BRB components under possible collapse mechanisms by focusing on moment transfer between the restrainer and end of the BRB. The approach have led to strict criteria for BRBF design in Japan. Structural building design codes in New Zealand, Europe and the United States do not yet provide analytical methods to assess BRB and connection stability, with prototype/subassemblage testing still required as the primary means of accreditation. Therefore it is of interest to investigate the capability of this method to evaluate stability of BRBs designs and gusset plate designs used in New Zealand (including unstiffened gusset connection zones). Chapter 5 demonstrates the capability of FEA to study to the performance of a subassemblage test under cyclic loading – resembling that of a diagonal ground storey BRBF with bolted connections. A series of detailed models were developed using the strategy presented in Chapter 3. The geometric features of BRB 6.5a (Chapter 2) were used as a basis for the BRBs modelled. To capture the different failure mechanisms identified in Takeuchi et al. (2017), models varied the length that the cruciform (non-yielding) section inserts into the restrainer. Results indicate that gusset plates designed according to New Zealand’s Steel Structures Standard (NZS 3404) limit BRBF performance. Increasing the thickness of the gusset plates according to modifications discussed in Chapter 4, improved the overall performance for all variants (except when Lin/ Bcruc = 0.5). The effect of bi-directional loading was not found to notably affect out-of-plane stability. Results were compared against predictions made by the analytical method used in Japan (Takeuchi method). This method was found to be generally conservative is predicting out-of-plane stability of each BRBF model. Recommendations to improve the accuracy of Takeuchi’s method are also provided. The outcomes from this thesis should be helpful for BRB manufacturers, researchers, and in the development of further design guidance of BRBFs.