USER: Undergraduate Studies in Earthquake Resilience

LINK: https://tinyurl.com/qcuser2018

USER is a summer research programme led by QuakeCoRE: The NZ Centre for Earthquake Resilience (www.quakecore.nz) at the University of Canterbury. The aim of the USER programme is to provide multi-disciplinary research opportunties for undergraduate (UG) students to become exposed to various aspects of the earthquake resilience problem. 

The programme is open to UG students from science, engineering, social science, and creative arts disciplines.  We believe that two differentiating factors in our programme for UG research is: (1) a large collection of students from a variety of different disciplinary background who forge collaborations via a ‘grand challenge’ problem related to Earthquake Resilience in New Zealand; and (2) students have access to the network of NZ’s leading researchers, who are members of QuakeCoRE, and who will collectively provide mentoring to students as well as guest lectures and field trips.

2017/2018 Grand Challenge:

For the 2017/2018 summer period the USER Grand Challenge is: ‘Modelling, visualising, and communicating future major earthquakes and their impacts to the New Zealand public’. QuakeCoRE researchers have recently developed models of over 500 different major earthquakes that might occur in the near future in New Zealand and undertaken advanced simulations (using NZ’s largest supercomputers) which predict how strong the ground will shake in each earthquake (e.g. such as this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9c-Fwhaigc ), and the aim of the USER Grand Challenge is to:

(click on the links below to view and edit tasks)

(1)  Modelling: Use existing models to determine the consequent liquefaction, landslides, building and bridge damage, highway/pipeline/telecommunication systems damage, and socio-economic impacts. (students with background in Science, Engineering, Social Science).

(2) Visualisation: Develop and use computational visualisation tools to convey the earthquakes, their ground shaking, and the modelled impacts (students with background in Mathematics, programming, computer science).

(3) Communication: Use one of more audio-visual methods to develop materials (e.g. posters, videos, podcasts, blogs, webpages) which can be used to efficiently and effectively communicate to the general public (students with background in the creative and performing arts, hazard management, social science).

Field trips:

As part of the USER programme students will get to experience two field trips:

(1)  ‘Looking for faults in the Canterbury region’: This field trip will involve travelling from Christchurch to the Canterbury foothills and Southern Alps to examine areas which clearly showcase active tectonics in the landscape.  This fieldtrip will be led by internationally-acclaimed researchers who have decades of experience in identifying and characterising faults, including research following the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake.

(2)  ‘Earthquake-resistant design of NZ infrastructure: This field trip will involve visiting several buildings that have been constructed in Christchurch that make use of a range of different structural systems for designing buildings to mitigate the effects of earthquakes (such as base isolation, steel and concrete buildings), and also geotechnical foundation design to mitigate the effects of liquefaction.

Project duration:

The programme runs for 10 weeks in the following blocks:

20th November - 21st Dec (5 weeks)

8th Jan - 9th Feb (5 weeks)

(there is some flexibility in these dates to satisfy prior constraints that people may have).

Scholarship amount and practical work:

• The USER programme is part of the UC Summer Scholarship scheme.  Further details can be found at the link below. 
• This summer programme can be credited toward Engineering degree practical work requirements
•  Note that we will accept students that are 2nd, 3rd or 4th year of an UG degree. (those that are not just to complete in 2017 will be funded seperately from the standard UC summer scholarship scheme, but the amount and details will be identical).

Application:

Applications are due 29th September. There are two application types depending on whether you will finish your degree at the end of 2017 or not.

(a) Students that will complete their UG degree at the end of 2017 can apply via the UC Summer Scholarship scheme: http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/summer-school/summer-scholarships/

This is project #23 of the UC Summer Scholarship Scheme. (website: http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/summer-school/summer-scholarships/uc-ss-projects-mgmt-mktg---wrc/ )

(b) Students that will not complete their degree at the end of 2017 can apply by completing this form.

Contact:

For any other enquiries please contact:

Brendon Bradley (UC website)

brendon.bradley@canterbury.ac.nz

Workplan:

1. Tim, Daniel, Brendon
   1. Prerequisite: Expose results for CyberShake 17p9 in a useful way for the students to use (IMs most likely).
   2. Use liquefaction/landslide code on results from CyberShake 17p9.
   3. Run hazard calculations on results for CyberShake 17p9.
   4. Investigate tools to manage/query the large amounts of data we produce based on industry standards for the so-called "Big Data".
2. Karim, Sung/Melody: 
   1. Usability study of SCEC-VDO 2017 release: Watch demo videos, understand its capabilities and see if we can produce NZ version of similar videos
   2. Learning Paraview 3D animation workflow, and produce a similar animation for a different event or improving the workflow
   3. Building GMT knowledge base: Curating GMT figures from QuakeCoRE selected publications and GMT codes (and data) for reproduction
3. Brendon, Brandy, Tom

Oversight:

Brendon, Chris

Talks:

Tues 21 Nov: Jarg Pettinga - Earthquake phenomena and the Kaikoura earthquake

Wed 22 Nov: Matthew Hughes

Thurs 23 Nov: Matt Walters - Science communication

Others: Tyler Barton, Ali Davies, Tom Wilson, Daniel Blake

Space

• Currently waiting to confirm space

Computers

• USER students are expected to provide their own computers 

Timeline