Flagship Leader (2017): Erica Seville , – Resilient Organisations
Opportunity
While most regions have economic models suitable for forecasting economic development under “business-as-usual‟ conditions, none have the capability to model the impact of transformational “shocks‟ to the economy caused by major events and infrastructure failures. Infrastructure interdependencies create complexity in the assessment of economic impacts resulting from component and cascading failures. To achieve earthquake resilience we must face these complexities head on, leverage data from impacts during the Canterbury Earthquakes to validate complex systems models, extend such models to include inter-relationship between horizontal (e.g. pipelines) and vertical infrastructure (e.g. buildings), and seek to quantify the resulting economic impacts.
The research under this Flagship will develop tools for evaluating and comparing the resilience of different infrastructure, enable stakeholders to quantitatively value seismic resilience investments, and assess the economic implications of mitigation, risk management, and post-earthquake recovery decisions considering infrastructure interdependencies. In this Flagship project we will seek to extend the capability of existing tools to account for direct and indirect losses from earthquakes to enable the critical evaluation of investment decisions and priorities for improving our nation’s resilience to earthquakes. For example, in collaboration with Flagship 3, we will examine the implications of alternative Earthquake-Prone Building policy settings on different regional economies in NZ. We will directly examine high-level priorities for seismic resilience investments taking due account for the complex interdependencies, including investment in more robust horizontal infrastructure, low-damage building stock, or improved post-earthquake response and recovery actions. Finally, we will directly examine alternative recovery interventions, their efficacy in different scenarios, and assess the needs of policy makers and emergency managers in the aftermath of our next major earthquake disaster.
Industry partners and stakeholders
This Flagship will leverage the $40 Billion investment in the rebuild of Christchurch, an unparalleled opportunity for cutting-edge research with immediate and far-reaching applications. Key consulting engineers actively engaged in Christchurch Rebuild projects will continue on-going collaborations with QuakeCoRE researchers to facilitate efficient technology transfer. As the responsible government entity for building standards, the MBIE Building Performance Group will be a key stakeholder and will be directly involved in the research through their (>$2M) on-going support of a work stream on the performance of concrete buildings. Other key stakeholders already supporting work of QuakeCoRE researchers on related topics include BRANZ and EQC.
Impact
Our goal is to identify how infrastructure investment decisions affect the economic and social resilience of the communities they serve, at local, regional and national scales. QuakeCoRE will bring together expertise in all forms of infrastructure (horizontal and vertical), spatially distributed ground motions, interdependencies, economic modelling, and planning, to develop a holistic understanding of economic impacts from earthquakes; thus, providing key input to policy decisions at all levels of government.
Scoping tourism dynamics post-quake: A module for MERIT
Understanding the governance dimensions of earthquake resilience
Creating the business case for investment in organisational resilience
Effects of alternative reconstruction pathways on earthquake recovery
Linking building properties and damage to earthquake-induced business’ downtime
Are plans at fault? Understanding how active faults are incorporated into land use plans
(erica.seville@resorgs.org.nz )
Flagship Leader (2018): David Johnston (David.Johnston@gns.cri.nz )
Flagship Deputy: Tracy Hatton
Flagship Summary
Our goal in Flagship 5 is to identify how societal decisions and choices affect the social, culture and economic resilience of communities, at local, regional and national scales. QuakeCoRE will bring together expertise from a range of disciplines, including tangata whenua knowledge to develop a holistic understanding of social, cultural and economic impacts from earthquakes; thus, providing key input to policy decisions at all levels of government and building a resilience community of practice.
The key thrust areas are:
- Addressing key knowledge gaps to improve our ability to holistically evaluate impacts of earthquakes, to understand and model system effects, and to advance our capability to evaluate the case for investment.
- Analysis and sharing of current tools and methodologies used for the evaluation of resilience-building policies and practices in order to identify opportunities for innovative cross-sectorial and organisational research collaboration.
- Development and evaluation of up to 6 Wellington case study activities which critically assess potential investment policies and practices to improve New Zealand’s resilience to earthquakes; and their use to provide inventive recommendations and advice for practical implementation.
Thrust Areas | Key tasks | Start | Finish |
FP5.1 Addressing key knowledge gaps [activities can occur in parallel and in any order] | 1. Developing new methods for evaluating socio-economic impacts | 1/07/2017 | 31/12/2020 |
2. Improving our understanding and analysis of system effects | 1/01/2017 | 31/12/2020 | |
3. Exploring new ways to evaluate the case for investment and methods to building social, cultural and economic resilience | 1/01/2017 | 31/12/2020 | |
FP5.2 Analysis of common methodologies, tools and knowledge | 1. Assessment of existing tools and alternative evaluation techniques | 1/01/2016 | 31/12/2017 |
2. Evaluation of stakeholder wants and needs | 1/01/2017 | 31/12/2017 | |
3. Series of workshops for sharing new discoveries/learnings across teams for cross-pollination | 1/01/2017 | 31/12/2020 | |
FP5.3 Development and evaluation of Wellington case study key activities | 1. Selection of Resilience Pathway key activities to be developed | 1/07/2017 | 01/01/2018 |
2. Resilience Pathway Activity 1 – Wellington Resilience Framing Exercise | 01/01/2018 | 31/12/2018 | |
3. Resilience Pathway Activity 2 – Whakaoranga Iwi Whanui | 01/01/2018 | 31/12/2020 | |
4. Resilience Pathway Task 3 – Wellington Infrastructure Investment | 01/01/2019 | 31/12/2020 | |
5. Resilience Pathway Task 4 – Planning and Policy in a Dynamic Risk Environment | 01/01/2018 | 31/12/2018 | |
6. Resilience Pathway Task 5 – Understanding Community-Based Resilience | 01/01/2018 | 31/12/2020 |
This flagship focuses on determining how we decide where to invest attention and finances to improve NZ’s resilience to earthquakes.
Key research thrusts in this Flagship include:
- Review existing tools: Review of existing tools and evaluation techniques to better understand their suitability and relevance for supporting different types of decisions about how best to improve NZ’s resilience to earthquakes.
- Evaluation of cases studies: Evaluation of real-world resilience investment decision case studies for New Zealand. Example topics include (but are not limited to) the following:
- What are the most effective forms of investment to support a community’s resilience and/or recovery? How do we make the business case for resilience investment? How might we differentiate between public and private benefits and costs? Are there different ways to encourage and finance resilience investments?
- What are the implications of different recovery decisions? For example, what pace and sequencing of rebuild is desired to deliver an effective recovery? What are the implications of changes to codes or construction practices? When are the use of cordons and/or demolition orders appropriate? How might we decide following future earthquake whether an area should or should not be rezoned?
- What are the barriers and enablers for effective resilience and recovery governance? How might we achieve better community engagement in resilience and recovery decisions? Are there particular governance structures that work better for different contexts or scales of event?
- Address knowledge gaps: Research to address current knowledge gaps, including: improving our ability to evaluate socio-economic impacts from earthquakes; improving our understanding and analysis of system effects; exploring new ways to evaluate the case for investment; or finding new ways to communicate with and engage the public and key stakeholders to invest in resilience.
What will success look like
- Key stakeholders (which stakeholders will depend on the Resilience Pathway decision being evaluated) actively using the evaluations that emerge from the Resilience Pathways Decision teams to support their investment decision making.
- Tools and techniques for evaluating resilience investments become ‘mainstream’ in the sense that practitioners have the confidence to either use them directly, or to commission their use for evaluating resilience investments as a matter of good practice.
- Practicality and relevance of research outcomes demonstrated by policy makers actively seeking out researchers to provide advice and input into future resilience investment decisions.
Research Meeting Schedule (link)
Flagship 5 Research Projects (2017)
Data integration and visualisation: Prototyping QuakeCoRE data platform for diverse needs