Page History

Jason Ingham, PI,

University of Auckland

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.

Characterisation and screening of New Zealand stopbank networks: Phase 1 outputs

Stopbank networks are a critical distributed infrastructure network, providing the primary means of flood protection for people and properties in many New Zealand communities. The construction of flood protection stopbanks in New Zealand began in the late 1800s, well before the development of modern embankment engineering standards. From 1949 to 1969, more than 2,500 km of stopbanks were constructed in New Zealand.  It is presently estimated that New Zealand has in excess of 3,500 km of stopbanks, protecting more than 100 flood-prone population centres, and managed largely by regional and local government agencies as well as private land-owners. 

Activities on stopbanks and floodways are generally governed by the Resource Management Act (1991) and maintenance is governed by the Local Government Act (2002). However, the enactment of stopbank management is entirely local; guided by Regional and District Plans in response to local priorities. Just as levels of flood protection vary locally, regionally, and nationally; the physical and engineering attributes of stopbank assets in New Zealand vary across the country depending on past decisions, community expectations and the risk profile of each area.  Available levels of resource and expertise vary widely among the regions, resulting in inconsistent design, assessment, and maintenance standards. Furthermore, there are presently no standardised national data sets, indicators or methodologies to assess (flood protection) risk across the country. 

In order to better understand the make-up of stopbank assets in New Zealand and build toward a unified national characterisation framework, a collaborative research project was established in 2017 with support from National Science Challenge (Resilience to Nature's Challenges (RNC)), QuakeCoRE, Quake Centre, and the Geospatial Research Institute. Industry guidance is provided to the project by a forum of Regional Council River Managers.

At the outset of this research programme, a key goal is to provide a single, reliable and spatially-referenced inventory in the form of the NZ Inventory of Stopbanks (NZIS). As at February 2018, a draft NZIS has been completed along with initial statistical and spatial analyses of the network.

This presentation will summarize progress on the national stopbank research project to date including initial national characterisation outputs along with future research needs.  Outputs to date improve our understanding of the New Zealand stopbank network and identify critical knowledge gaps that will be addressed in the next stages of the project. Future work will use methods and outputs from other RNC distributed infrastructure projects to enable broad-based consequence assessments across New Zealand's stopbank portfolio.

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)

 The role of iwi management plans in managing natural hazards and informing our research

Abstract

Iwi management plans provide a valuable strategic tool for natural hazard management, however their potential influence and role within Council planning and the research community is not being realised. Key findings of this research include that:

•             IMPs provide an opportunity to include information on natural hazards, their preferred management options, action points for reducing risks, and engagement processes to assist with the transfer of natural hazard science and mitigation measures. They provide a valuable strategic tool for natural hazard management, however their potential influence and role is uncertain.

•             IMPs are legislated under the RMA, and therefore have the potential to provide very strong guidance to users of IMPs. IMPs can contribute to the co-management and/or co-governance tools available to both iwi and local government by providing important guidance as to priorities, issues, actions, and engagement processes.

•             Underpinning IMPs is mātauranga Māori; it is therefore essential that researchers, scientists, and council staff understand what mātauranga Māori is, and how the transfer of knowledge between iwi and others can benefit all those involved in natural hazard management, including Māori communities.

•             IMPs provide an initial ‘first step’ as an engagement tool with iwi. They may outline principles for engaging with their iwi; a process for engaging on policy development and resource consents; information requirements; the iwi’s process for assessing proposals; and may stipulate a preferred method of contact.

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