Under the framework of New Public Management, the government has decentralised the responsibility for Disaster Risk Management (DRM) to regional, local, and community levels in New Zealand. This decentralisation serves political agendas related to resource allocation and is supported by empirical evidence suggesting that involving communities in DRM during recovery decision-making enhances disaster resilience. Extensive evidence indicates that community participation in DRM, especially during recovery decision-making, can significantly improve recovery outcomes at the community level. However, there has been limited research into whether the legal framework in New Zealand effectively facilitates meaningful public engagement to empower the public in influencing disaster recovery decisions. To address this gap in the literature, this thesis aims to explore the extent to which legislative and governance arrangements transfer the responsibility, liability, and costs of managing disaster risks to local levels without enabling meaningful public contribution to and influence on recovery decisions affecting them. Situated within Public Law and Disaster Risk and Resilience disciplines and using a case study of Greater Christchurch, New Zealand, this interdisciplinary thesis examines both common law and statutory provisions in the legal framework impacting public engagement before and during recovery from the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence. In particular, this thesis assesses how legislative, and governance frameworks influenced communities’ ability to influence recovery decision-making following the 2010-2011 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence (CES). This thesis shows that before the CES, the New Zealand public engagement system closely adhered to the common law principle of the ‘duty to consult’, which remains the current legal standard. This principle required decision-makers to use the 'public notice and comment' approach as a minimum, limiting meaningful community participation in decision-making. After the earthquakes, reliance on this traditional approach caused growing frustration and division locally, as the public struggled to effectively engage in and influence recovery decisions, resulting in new community activism. The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act (CER Act), introduced following the Christchurch Earthquake, included innovative provisions on public engagement. However, for various reasons, this Act appeared to have minimal impact on meaningful public engagement in recovery decision-making, which continued to align with the broader, existing public engagement system and associated norms. The empirical findings indicate that despite the novel legislative language, the traditional public engagement framework in New Zealand constrained effective engagement, leading to a broader erosion of trust between the public and the government. This was largely attributed to the default ‘public notice and comment’ approach at the local government level, with inadequate mechanisms for community engagement in central government decision-making shaping the expectations of recovery decision-makers still operating within this framework. Notable departures from this traditional approach were evident in the practices of the Waimakariri District Council and Christchurch City Council. Particularly noteworthy was the ‘Share an Idea’ public engagement campaign. Unlike conventional processes, it did not commence with a near-final or draft document. Instead, it utilised participatory mechanisms that fostered meaningful dialogue, enabling the public to significantly shape the content of the draft Christchurch Central Recovery Plan. The initial success of such participatory engagement underscores its potential effectiveness throughout the entire recovery planning process, an option that was not exercised by the central government. In conclusion, this thesis argues that New Zealand should move beyond the entrenched ‘public notice and comment’ approach and adopt more open and inclusive public participation mechanisms. It contends that supplementing this approach with proactive participatory methods before disasters could yield favorable outcomes during disaster recovery, thereby ensuring meaningful public involvement in future decisions that affect communities.
This research seeks to understand if memorials like the CWM operate as effective prompts for collective memory as distance from the event it commemorates grows. The Citizens’ War Memorial (CWM) was built to honour the men and women who died serving New Zealand in World War One. While the original purpose of the memorial was clear, the way the public have interacted with the memorial throughout time has seen its function vary. This dissertation addresses how the public has viewed and interacted with the CWM from the planning phase up to the present year of 2025. By systematically tracking the key events through time, it argues that key events such as WWII, the Anti-Vietnam War protest period, the Anzac Revival and Canterbury 2011 earthquake have seen the public use and view the memorial differently to its intended purpose. In the current day, the memorial is once again used as a place to remember and honour the dead from WWI showing that purpose of a memorial can ebb and flow as generations change.
The standard way in which disaster damages are measured involves examining separately the number of fatalities, of injuries, of people otherwise affected, and the financial damage that natural disasters cause. Here, we implement a novel way to aggregate these separate measures of disaster impact and apply it to two recent catastrophic events: the Christchurch (New Zealand) earthquakes and the Greater Bangkok (Thailand) floods of 2011. This new measure, which is similar to the World Health Organization’s calculation of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) lost from the burden of diseases and injuries, is described in detail in Noy (2014). It allows us to conclude that New Zealand lost 180 thousand lifeyears as a result of the 2011 events, and Thailand lost 2,644 thousand years. In per capita terms, the loss is similar, with both countries losing about 15 days per person due to the 2011 catastrophic events in these two countries. We also compare these events to other potentially similar events.
We examine the role of business interruption insurance in business recovery following the Christchurch earthquake in 2011 in the short- and medium-term. In the short-term analysis, we ask whether insurance increases the likelihood of business survival in the aftermath of a disaster. We find only weak evidence that those firms that had incurred damage, but were covered by business interruption insurance, had higher likelihood of survival post-quake compared with those firms that did not have insurance. This absence of evidence may reflect the high degree of uncertainty in the months following the 2011 earthquake and the multiplicity of severe aftershocks. For the medium-term, our results show a more explicit role for insurance in the aftermath of a disaster. Firms with business interruption insurance have a higher probability of increasing productivity and improved performance following a catastrophe. Furthermore, our results show that those organisations that receive prompt and full payments of their claims have a better recovery, in terms of profitability and a subjective ‘”better off” measure’ than those that had protracted or inadequate claim payments (less than 80% of the claim paid within 2.5 years). Interestingly, the latter group does worse than those organisations that had damage but no insurance coverage. This analysis strongly indicates the importance not only of good insurance coverage, but of an insurance system that also delivers prompt claim payments. As a first paper attempting to empirically identify a causal effect of insurance on business recovery, we also emphasize some caveats to our analysis.
Earthquakes are insured only with public sector involvement in high-income countries where the risk of earthquakes is perceived to be high. The proto-typical examples of this public sector involvement are the public earthquake insurance schemes in California, Japan, and New Zealand (NZ). Each of these insurance programs is structured differently, and the purpose of this paper is to examine these differences using a concrete case-study, the sequence of earthquakes that occurred in the Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2011. This event turned out to have been the most heavily insured earthquake event in history. We examine what would have been the outcome of the earthquakes had the system of insurance in NZ been different. In particular, we focus on the public earthquake insurance programs in California (the California Earthquake Authority - CEA), and in Japan (Japanese Earthquake Reinsurance - JER). Overall, the aggregate cost to the public insurer in NZ was $NZ 11.1 billion in its response to the earthquakes. If a similar-sized disaster event had occurred in Japan and California, homeowners would have received $NZ 2.5 billion and $NZ 1.4 billion from the JER and CEA, respectively. We further describe the spatial and distributive patterns of these different scenarios.
We measure the longer-term effect of a major earthquake on the local economy, using night-time light intensity measured from space, and investigate whether insurance claim payments for damaged residential property affected the local recovery process. We focus on the destructive Christchurch earthquake of 2011 as our case study. In this event more than 95% of residential housing units were covered by insurance, but insurance payments were staggered over 5 years, enabling us to identify their local impact. We find that night-time luminosity can capture the process of recovery and describe the recovery’s determinants. We also find that insurance payments contributed significantly to the process of economic recovery after the earthquake, but delayed payments were less affective and cash settlement of claims were more affective in contributing to local recovery than insurance-managed rebuilding.
We estimate the causal effects of a large unanticipated natural disaster on high schoolers’ university enrolment decisions and subsequent medium-term labour market outcomes. Using national administrative data after a destructive earthquake in New Zealand, we estimate that the disaster raises tertiary education enrolment of recent high school graduates by 6.1 percentage points. The effects are most pronounced for males, students who are academically weak relative to their peers, and students from schools directly damaged by the disaster. As relatively low ability males are overrepresented in sectors of the labour market helped by the earthquake, greater demand for university may stem from permanent changes in deeper behavioural parameters such as risk aversion or time preference, rather than as a coping response to poor economic opportunities.
In 2010/2011, Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, suffered a devastating series of earthquakes and aftershocks that resulted in loss of life and significant damage to infrastructure and housing. This created an opportunity to re-build and regenerate a city ready to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. This paper examines the effectiveness of cross sector collaboration to deliver a more resilient, sustainable, and healthy city. Drawing on case studies focused on a proposed innercity housing project, we highlight the challenges and barriers to alternative healthier development. We found a series of barriers to an urban recovery and rebuild that included a lack of skills to transact between the private and public sector, a lack of cooperation and shared drivers, and a lack of bold leadership and workable relationships. This paper underlines some of the failures to support regeneration that in turn highlights what is needed for regeneration approaches and processes to foster innovation and deliver healthier and more sustainable urban living.
While societal messages can encourage an unhealthy strive for perfection, the notion of embracing individual flaws and openly displaying vulnerabilities can appear foreign and outlandish. However, when fallibility is acknowledged and imperfection embraced, intimate relationships built on foundations of acceptance, trust and understanding can be established. In an architectural context, similar deep-rooted connections can be formed between a people and a place through the retention of layers of historical identity. When a building is allowed to age with blemishes laid bare for all to see, an architectural work can exhibit a sense of 'humanising vulnerability' where the bruises and scars it bears are able to visually communicate its contextual narrative. This thesis explores the notion of designing to capitalise on past decay through revitalisation of the former Wood Brothers Flour Mill in Addington, Christchurch (1891). Known as one of the city's last great industrial buildings, the 130-year-old structure remains hugely impressive due to its sheer size and scale despite being abandoned and subject to vandalism for a number of years. Its condition of obsolescence ensured the retention of visible signs of wear and tear in addition to the extensive damage caused by the 2010-12 Canterbury earthquakes. In offering a challenge to renovation and reconstruction as a means of conservation, this thesis asks if 'doing less' has the potential to 'do more'. How can an understanding of architecture as an ongoing process inform a design approach to celebrate ageing and patina? While the complex is undergoing redevelopment at the time of writing, the design project embraces the condition of the historic buildings in the immediate aftermath of the earthquakes and builds upon the patina of the mill and adjacent flour and grain store in developing a design for their adaptation as a micro-distillery. Research into the traditional Japanese ideology of wabi-sabi and its practical applications form the basis for a regenerative design approach which finds value in imperfection, impermanence and incompleteness. The thesis combines a literature review, precedent review and site analysis together with a design proposal. This thesis shows that adaptive reuse projects can benefit from an active collaboration with the processes of decay. Instead of a mindset where an architectural work is considered the finished article upon completion of construction, an empathetic and sensitive design philosophy is employed in which careful thought is given to the continued preservation and evolution of a structure with the recognition that evidence of past wear, tear, patina and weathering can all contribute positively to a building's future. In this fashion, rather than simply remaining as relics of the past, buildings can allow the landscape of their urban context to shape and mould them to ensure that their architectural experience can continue to be enjoyed by generations to come.
This thesis aims to find a new weld sizing criterion for the steel construction industry in New Zealand. Current standards, such as NZS 3404, ANSI/AISC 360-16, and Eurocode 3 use a factor of 0.6 to calculate weld capacity from the weld metal’s ultimate tensile strength (UTS). This difference between weld capacity and UTS is thought to have arisen from the need for a large factor of safety to ensure welds perform correctly during an earthquake. The events in Christchurch proved that this criterion was able to work as intended. Several papers have been published by P. Dong from University of Michigan, and alongside other researchers, they investigate a new definition of weld shear strength by using a traction stress-based method. This new method not only allows realistic angles of weld fracture to be investigated, but also different weld geometries such as partial penetration butt welds. Ongoing research at HERA is showing how this welding technique is a more economical option than larger fillet welds with similar performance. For this thesis a range of sample types were statically tested until failure. UTS of several weld metals was found and then compared with transverse shear results to see if 0.6 is indeed correct. It was found that if the results from the standardized transverse shear samples was used, this ratio could be increased to 1.0. But if the results from cruciform joint samples was used, which still load the weld in a transverse direction but with a higher stress concentration, required the ratio to be 0.8 for welds that could be welded with a single pass, and decreased further to 0.75 for large welds with 3 passes. Two types of partial penetration butt weld (PPBW) geometries were compared to a comparatively sized fillet weld. These tests showed the PPBWs were the best performers, with all PPBWs surviving testing compared to only 33% of fillet welds.
This thesis presents an assessment of historic seismic performance of the New Zealand stopbank network from the 1968 Inangahua earthquake through to the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake. An overview of the types of stopbanks and the main aspects of the design and construction of earthen stopbanks was presented. Stopbanks are structures that are widely used on the banks of rivers and other water bodies to protect against the impact of flood events. Earthen stopbanks are found to be the most used for such protection measures. Different stopbank damage or failure modes that may occur due to flooding or earthquake excitation were assessed with a focus on past earthquakes internationally, and examples of these damage and failure modes were presented. Stopbank damage and assessment reports were collated from available reconnaissance literature to develop the first geospatial database of stopbank damage observed in past earthquakes in New Zealand. Damage was observed in four earthquakes over the past 50 years, with a number of earthquakes resulting in no stopbank damage. The damage database therefore focussed on the Edgecumbe, Darfield, Christchurch and Kaikōura earthquakes. Cracking of the crest and liquefaction-induced settlement were the most common forms of damage observed. To understand the seismic demand on the stopbank network in past earthquakes, geospatial analyses were undertaken to approximate the peak ground acceleration (PGA) across the stopbank network for ten large earthquakes that have occurred in New Zealand over the past 50 years. The relationship between the demand, represented by the peak ground acceleration (PGA) and damage is discussed and key trends identified. Comparison of the seismic demand and the distribution of damage suggested that the seismic performance of the New Zealand stopbank network has been generally good across all events considered. Although a significant length of the stopbank networks were exposed to high levels of shaking in past events, the overall damage length was a small percentage of this. The key aspect controlling performance was the performance of the underlying foundation soils and the effect of this on the stopbank structure and stability.
This thesis revisits the topic of earthquake recovery in Christchurch City more than a decade after the Canterbury earthquakes. Despite promising visions of a community reconnected and a sustainable and liveable city, significant portions of the city’s core – the Red Zone – remain dilapidated and “eerily empty”. At the same time, new developments in other areas have proven to be alienated or underutilised. Currently, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority’s plans for the rebuilding highlight the delivery of more residential housing to re-populate the city centre. However, prevalent approaches to housing development in Christchurch are ineffective for building an inclusive and active community. Hence, the central inquiry of the thesis is how the development of housing complexes can revitalise the Red Zone within the Christchurch city centre. The inquiry has been carried out through a research-through-design methodology, recognising the importance of an in-depth investigation that is contextualised and combined with the intuition and embodied knowledge of the designer. The investigation focuses on a neglected site in the Red Zone in the heart of Christchurch city, with significant Victorian and Edwardian Baroque heritage buildings, including Odeon Theatre, Lawrie & Wilson Auctioneers, and Sol Square, owned by The Regional Council Environment Canterbury. The design inquiry argues, develops, and is carried through a place-assemblage lens to housing development for city recovery, which recognizes the significance of socially responsive architecture that explores urban renewal by forging connections within the social network. Therefore, place-assemblage criteria and methods for developing socially active and meaningful housing developments are identified. Firstly, this thesis argues that co-living housing models are more focused on people relations and collective identity than the dominant developer-driven housing rebuilds, as they prioritise conduits for interaction and shared social meaning and practices. Secondly, the adaptive reuse of derelict heritage structures is proposed to reinvigorate the urban fabric, as heritage is seen to be conceived as and from a social assemblage of people. The design is realised by the principles outlined in the ICOMOS charter, which involves incorporating the material histories of existing structures and preserving the intangible heritage of the site by ensuring the continuity of cultural practices. Lastly, design processes and methods are also vital for place-sensitive results, which pay attention to the site’s unique characteristics to engage with local stakeholders and communities. The research explores place-assemblage methods of photographic extraction, the drawing of story maps, precedent studies, assemblage maps, bricolages, and paper models, which show an assembly of layers that piece together the existing heritage, social conduits, urban commons and housing to conceptualise the social network within its place.
This thesis explores the intricate relationship between dance and trauma, focusing on how embodied practices facilitate psychological recovery. Dominant narratives often prioritise cognitive experiences, limiting our understanding of healing. By employing a qualitative, post-positivist and critical autoethnographic approach, I reflect on my journey through trauma following the Christchurch earthquakes, utilising journal entries from the point of view of my younger self to illustrate the transformative power of movement and dance. The key themes of this research are structure and routine, socialisation, and alleviation of anxious thoughts, demonstrating how engaging with the body challenges conventional notions of recovery. Furthermore, it highlights the complementary role of Dance Movement Therapy in trauma- informed practices, advocating for a holistic approach that recognises the mind-body connection. The findings underscore the necessity of viewing trauma as an embodied experience and propose a shift toward movement-based therapeutic practices that empower individuals through their lived experiences. Ultimately, this research calls for reimagining therapeutic frameworks, emphasising dance's potential to complement current trauma- informed therapies and promote a bottom-up approach to recovery.
