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Overview

The 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes illustrated the severe impacts and vulnerability of New Zealand communities to liquefaction hazards (approximately 50% of the total $40B damage). Liquefaction hazards are not unique to Christchurch alone, and exist in the majority of our major cities as a result of NZs geology and geomorphologic evolution.  Currently, liquefaction susceptibility, triggering, and consequences are coarsely quantified using empirical methods based on case histories.  As a result, extensive investigations and analysis of the Canterbury earthquakes by QuakeCoRE PIs and their international collaborators have illustrated that such empirical methods lack sufficient precision for quantifying liquefaction impacts for the purposes of seismic mitigation and risk assessment.  A key requirement in the immediate future is an improved precision in the estimation of susceptibility, triggering, and impacts of liquefaction of various soils through the use of multi-disciplinary experimental and simulation research programmes with an emphasis on fundamental physics in place of empiricism from observations.

QuakeCoRE and industry researchers have collected unprecedented geotechnical datasets from the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes, which are archived on open-source community databases.  Such datasets include over 18,000 cone penetrometer tests of soil strength and stiffness, high-quality “undisturbed” soil samples, ground water table depths, horizontal and vertical ground deformations from satellite imagery and airborne LiDAR, surface fissuring and lateral spreading, and foundation and underground lifeline failures due to ground deformations.  The quality and quantity of these individual datasets, as well as the multitude of data from multi-disciplinary methods are unique in a world-wide context, and have provided a critical momentum that is leading to increasing investment from leading international researchers to collaborate with QuakeCoRE PIs.  This Flagship will leverage on-going experimental data collection and analysis from multi-disciplinary researchers related to the Canterbury earthquakes to provide a paradigm shift in the models used to predict the susceptibility, triggering, and impacts of liquefaction with world-wide impacts.  Particular attention will be devoted to understanding and modelling the liquefaction susceptibility and triggering of non-plastic fines-containing soils; the punching failure of shallow foundations in near-surface liquefaction; lateral spreading impacts on bridge abutments and pile foundations; and pipe network vulnerability.  Parallel work streams will use lessons learned from the Canterbury earthquakes to better understand the impacts of soil liquefaction, and possible mitigation measures, on other urban and rural regions around NZ, in particular, the liquefaction-resistance of pumiceous- and residual-soils in Auckland and Northland, and the liquefaction of susceptibility of Wellington CBD soils.

Industry partners and Stakeholders

QuakeCoRE members are currently highly engaged in collaborative research with the geotechnical industry (e.g. Tonkin and Taylor) and stakeholders (EQC and Christchurch City Council) in the analysis of observations and data from the Canterbury earthquakes and implications for the region at large.  In addition, specific relationships also exist with major utility and asset owners, for example Lyttelton Port Company, who are undertaking >$1B of earthquake damage repairs, mostly due to geotechnical failures.  Through the on-going EQC-funded research on liquefaction impacts and mitigation measures, strong international links have been formed through the Flagship Leader’s membership on the expert international advisory panel overseeing EQC’s multi-million dollar land damage research work stream.  Through the above partners, and also additional relevant local authorities (Wellington and Auckland councils), QuakeCoRE will advance the understanding of liquefaction hazards in our other major cities.

Impact

Our goal is to develop novel methods to improve the quantification of impacts of soil liquefaction on infrastructure through a fundamental understanding of liquefaction susceptibility, triggering, and consequences; and use these methods to assess liquefaction impacts throughout NZ and their potential to be mitigated.  These novel methods will represent a major advance in the field, and will be based on the unprecedented data and internationally recognised on-going research related to soil liquefaction and related infrastructure damage in the Canterbury earthquakes.

 

Current Projects

 

2016 Projects

Related Research


Monthly Meetings

2017 Meetings

 

2016 Meetings

Workshops

  • Annual meeting - FP2 workshop

 

 

Other Presentations

 

 

Requests for Proposals

  • 2017 QuakeCoRE Collaboration Plan - This will be released mid/late-Sept following the 2016 QuakeCoRE Annual Meeting
     
  • 2016 QuakeCoRE Collaboration Plan - See page 9-10 for GMSV priorities. Proposals are due November 20, 2015.

 

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