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Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

The supply of water following disasters has always been of significant concern to communities. Failure of water systems not only causes difficulties for residents and critical users but may also affect other hard and soft infrastructure and services. The dependency of communities and other infrastructure on the availability of safe and reliable water places even more emphasis on the resilience of water supply systems. This thesis makes two major contributions. First, it proposes a framework for measuring the multifaceted resilience of water systems, focusing on the significance of the characteristics of different communities for the resilience of water supply systems. The proposed framework, known as the CARE framework, consists of eight principal activities: (1) developing a conceptual framework; (2) selecting appropriate indicators; (3) refining the indicators based on data availability; (4) correlation analysis; (5) scaling the indicators; (6) weighting the variables; (7) measuring the indicators; and (8) aggregating the indicators. This framework allows researchers to develop appropriate indicators in each dimension of resilience (i.e., technical, organisational, social, and economic), and enables decision makers to more easily participate in the process and follow the procedure for composite indicator development. Second, it identifies the significant technical, social, organisational and economic factors, and the relevant indicators for measuring these factors. The factors and indicators were gathered through a comprehensive literature review. They were then verified and ranked through a series of interviews with water supply and resilience specialists, social scientists and economists. Vulnerability, redundancy and criticality were identified as the most significant technical factors affecting water supply system robustness, and consequently resilience. These factors were tested for a scenario earthquake of Mw 7.6 in Pukerua Bay in New Zealand. Four social factors and seven indicators were identified in this study. The social factors are individual demands and capacities, individual involvement in the community, violence level in the community, and trust. The indicators are the Giving Index, homicide rate, assault rate, inverse trust in army, inverse trust in police, mean years of school, and perception of crime. These indicators were tested in Chile and New Zealand, which experienced earthquakes in 2010 and 2011 respectively. The social factors were also tested in Vanuatu following TC Pam, which hit the country in March 2015. Interestingly, the organisational dimension contributed the largest number of factors and indicators for measuring water supply resilience to disasters. The study identified six organisational factors and 17 indicators that can affect water supply resilience to disasters. The factors are: disaster precaution; predisaster planning; data availability, data accessibility and information sharing; staff, parts, and equipment availability; pre-disaster maintenance; and governance. The identified factors and their indicators were tested for the case of Christchurch, New Zealand, to understand how organisational capacity affected water supply resilience following the earthquake in February 2011. Governance and availability of critical staff following the earthquake were the strongest organisational factors for the Christchurch City Council, while the lack of early warning systems and emergency response planning were identified as areas that needed to be addressed. Economic capacity and quick access to finance were found to be the main economic factors influencing the resilience of water systems. Quick access to finance is most important in the early stages following a disaster for response and restoration, but its importance declines over time. In contrast, the economic capacity of the disaster struck area and the water sector play a vital role in the subsequent reconstruction phase rather than in the response and restoration period. Indicators for these factors were tested for the case of the February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. Finally, a new approach to measuring water supply resilience is proposed. This approach measures the resilience of the water supply system based on actual water demand following an earthquake. The demand-based method calculates resilience based on the difference between water demand and system capacity by measuring actual water shortage (i.e., the difference between water availability and demand) following an earthquake.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

In September 2010 and February 2011, the Canterbury region experienced devastating earthquakes with an estimated economic cost of over NZ$40 billion (Parker and Steenkamp, 2012; Timar et al., 2014; Potter et al., 2015). The insurance market played an important role in rebuilding the Canterbury region after the earthquakes. Homeowners, insurance and reinsurance markets and New Zealand government agencies faced a difficult task to manage the rebuild process. From an empirical and theoretic research viewpoint, the Christchurch disaster calls for an assessment of how the insurance market deals with such disasters in the future. Previous studies have investigated market responses to losses in global catastrophes by focusing on the insurance supply-side. This study investigates both demand-side and supply-side insurance market responses to the Christchurch earthquakes. Despite the fact that New Zealand is prone to seismic activities, there are scant previous studies in the area of earthquake insurance. This study does offer a unique opportunity to examine and document the New Zealand insurance market response to catastrophe risk, providing results critical for understanding market responses after major loss events in general. A review of previous studies shows higher premiums suppress demand, but how higher premiums and a higher probability of risk affect demand is still largely unknown. According to previous studies, the supply of disaster coverage is curtailed unless the market is subsidised, however, there is still unsettled discussion on why demand decreases with time from the previous disaster even when the supply of coverage is subsidised by the government. Natural disaster risks pose a set of challenges for insurance market players because of substantial ambiguity associated with the probability of such events occurring and high spatial correlation of catastrophe losses. Private insurance market inefficiencies due to high premiums and spatially concentrated risks calls for government intervention in the provision of natural disaster insurance to avert situations of noninsurance and underinsurance. Political economy considerations make it more likely for government support to be called for if many people are uninsured than if few people are uninsured. However, emergency assistance for property owners after catastrophe events can encourage most property owners to not buy insurance against natural disaster and develop adverse selection behaviour, generating larger future risks for homeowners and governments. On the demand-side, this study has developed an intertemporal model to examine how demand for insurance changes post-catastrophe, and how to model it theoretically. In this intertemporal model, insurance can be sought in two sequential periods of time, and at the second period, it is known whether or not a loss event happened in period one. The results show that period one demand for insurance increases relative to the standard single period model when the second period is taken into consideration, period two insurance demand is higher post-loss, higher than both the period one demand and the period two demand without a period one loss. To investigate policyholders experience from the demand-side perspective, a total of 1600 survey questionnaires were administered, and responses from 254 participants received representing a 16 percent response rate. Survey data was gathered from four institutions in Canterbury and is probably not representative of the entire population. The results of the survey show that the change from full replacement value policy to nominated replacement value policy is a key determinant of the direction of change in the level of insurance coverage after the earthquakes. The earthquakes also highlighted the plight of those who were underinsured, prompting policyholders to update their insurance coverage to reflect the estimated cost of re-building their property. The survey has added further evidence to the existing literature, such as those who have had a recent experience with disaster loss report increased risk perception if a similar event happens in future with females reporting a higher risk perception than males. Of the demographic variables, only gender has a relationship with changes in household cover. On the supply-side, this study has built a risk-based pricing model suitable to generate a competitive premium rate for natural disaster insurance cover. Using illustrative data from the Christchurch Red-zone suburbs, the model generates competitive premium rates for catastrophe risk. When the proposed model incorporates the new RMS high-definition New Zealand Earthquake Model, for example, insurers can find the model useful to identify losses at a granular level so as to calculate the competitive premium. This study observes that the key to the success of the New Zealand dual insurance system despite the high prevalence of catastrophe losses are; firstly the EQC’s flat-rate pricing structure keeps private insurance premiums affordable and very high nationwide homeowner take-up rates of natural disaster insurance. Secondly, private insurers and the EQC have an elaborate reinsurance arrangement in place. By efficiently transferring risk to the reinsurer, the cost of writing primary insurance is considerably reduced ultimately expanding primary insurance capacity and supply of insurance coverage.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Introduction This poster presents the inferred initial performance and recovery of the water supply network of Christchurch following the 22 February 2011 Mw 6.2 earthquake. Results are presented in a geospatial and temporal fashion. This work strengthens the current understanding of the restoration of such a system after a disaster and quantifies the losses caused by this earthquake in respect with the Christchurch community. Figure 1 presents the topology of the water supply network as well as the spatial distribution of the buildings and their use.