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Flagship 3

Researchers from Flagship 3 are combining empirical data from the Canterbury earthquakes with shaking simulations provided by researchers from Flagship 1. Communities across New Zealand, but more specifically in the South Island, are being visited as part of the exercise of developing asset inventories and understanding the role of early unreinforced masonry buildings in the character and economic prosperity of the community. Drone footage is being used to generate point clouds of entire precincts of buildings, and numerical models are being developed to simulate building failure mechanisms.  In time, the intent is that geotechnical information from Flagship 2 will be incorporated so that liquefaction and soil-structure interaction are included in the simulations. The goal is to forecast building damage response including debris fall zones, in such a way that fatality forecasts can be attempted when accounting for pedestrian counts. The debris data will also be helpful for forecasting cordon zones.  The effects of seismic retrofit strategies can then also be simulated. The longer-term aspiration is to explore the viability of using gaming software to provide visual representation of building damage for an entire community of buildings, with the information being scientifically robust.  The thinking is that such simulations will assist decision makers in planning for future earthquake scenarios.

Project AF8 (Alpine Fault Magnitude 8)

Project AF8 (Alpine Fault magnitude 8) is three-year initiative with the goal of improving the response capability and readiness of South Island communities for a future Alpine Fault magnitude 8 earthquake. As a boundary organization, Project AF8 connects the emergency management and Alpine Fault science communities and acts as a vehicle to engage widely across CDEM and partner agencies, lifelines organisations, government and communities. It is co-funded by the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, Resilience to Nature’s Challenges (Rural Priority Laboratory), QuakeCoRE and EQC. A major contribution from the science team was the development a robust, scientifically credible Alpine Fault scenario, which describes the hazard footprint of a predicted event. Detailed impact assessments of the potential damage to buildings, casualties and injuries, and restoration timeframes have also been undertaken. The science team has provided more than forty presentations to a range of agencies, including DOC, Ministry of Health, Mayoral Forums, Chinese Embassy, Red Cross, Local Government, Ministry of Transport, emergency services and CDEM groups over the past 18 months.

Using the scenario as a foundation for regionally-focused, multi-agency planning workshops in Year 1, a major output of Year 2 has been the development of the SAFER Plan (South Island Alpine Fault Earthquake Response), which outlines response priorities, actions, and resources for the first seven days post-quake. The plan is currently being socialized with all Project AF8 partners before being formally adopted by the project's partners. In addition, social media and community engagement is an important focus of Project AF8 as a tool for reaching communities and organisations who will play a role in the response and recovery post-quake. A feature of the project has been the constructive engagement with traditional and new media, for example Fairfax Media's Press newspaper and its Stuff news platform, in sharing the messages of the project for community-wide discussion. Project AF8 has developed a series of short and long-format videos and have partnered with Radio New Zealand to host them on their YouTube channel. This will give Project AF8 excellent visibility and ‘searchability’ online into the future.

Impacts of the Alpine Fault earthquake on government productivity

The Kaikoura earthquakes took Wellington by surprise. Tens of thousands of Wellington workers were affected, many of these in Government departments which had to be relocated for an extended period due to damaged buildings.  What level of disruption would an Alpine Fault earthquake have on the government sector in Wellington?  Current economic models being used to assess the impact on Wellington of a big earthquake are not well calibrated with respect to the productivity of the government sector. Even a small change in productivity could have a resulting large economic impact, particularly given the importance of the government sector and supporting services to the Wellington economy.  In this project, we have leveraged work being undertaken by Flagship 4, developing updated fragility curves for commercial buildings, and the RiskScape modelling of impacts in wellington; in addition to Kaikoura productivity impacts research already being undertaken under a Natural Hazards Research Platform (NHRP), to understand productivity impacts from an Alpine Fault scenario. This presentation will cover the findings of our post-Kaikoura case studies and the translation of those results into a government productivity module in MERIT (Modelling the Economic Resilience of Infrastructure Tool)

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