This research is a creative exploration of transmedia’s ability to offer up a model of distribution and audience engagement for political documentary. Transmedia, as is well known, is a fluid concept. It is not restricted to the activities of the entertainment industry and its principles also reverberate in the practice of political and activist documentary projects. This practice-led research draws on data derived from the production and circulation of Obrero, an independent transmedia documentary. The project explores the conditions and context of the Filipino rebuild workers who migrated to Christchurch, New Zealand after the earthquake in 2011. Obrero began as a film festival documentary that co-exists with two other new media iterations, each reaching its respective target audience: a web documentary, and a Facebook-native documentary. This study argues that relocating the documentary across new media spaces not only expands the narrative but also extends the fieldwork and investigation, forms like-minded publics, and affords the creation of an organised hub of information for researchers, academics and the general public. Treating documentary as research can represent a novel pathway to knowledge generation and the present case study, overall, provides an innovative model for future scholarship
The devastating consequences of past events, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean and 2011 Tōhoku tsunamis, emphasise the need for continued improvement in resilience measures. Given that 80% of magnitude 8+ earthquakes occur on the Pacific Rim, New Zealand's tsunami risk is significant. This research develops a novel tsunami inundation model. The proposed model applies equations based on hydraulic principles, including energy conservation (friction loss). While it does not fully replicate hydrodynamic models, it maintains a two-dimensional approach and offers significant improvements over currently implemented simplified methods. It retains excellent computational efficiency (seconds to minutes) while achieving a significant increase in accuracy that is comparable to traditional hydrodynamic models, which typically take hours to days. Calibration of the roughness input variables to hydrodynamic modelling at Gisborne and Christchurch, New Zealand, optimised the model to achieve similarity index values of above 84% for inundation extent, while 77% of inundation depths were within ±1 m and over 93% within ±2 m. This research then produces the first nationally consistent tsunami exposure assessment for New Zealand using a physics-based modelling method. Using probabilistic shoreline wave amplitude data, the study generates high-resolution (10 m) inundation maps for seven return periods (50th and 84th percentiles). These maps are integrated with land cover and infrastructure data to quantify exposure and identify the most vulnerable locations. The results highlight exposure not only to the commonly studied cities but also to several provincial areas. The identification of exposure is the foremost step towards practical resilience efforts; however, understanding specific infrastructure impacts ensures that countermeasures and risk reduction practices are implemented. Therefore, a detailed evaluation of the NZTA Bridge Manual is conducted. Comparisons are made between the NZTA methodology and the rapid model developed in this research. The results reveal a significant overestimation of bridge and culvert exposure by NZTA methods. The study further highlights critical exposure locations for bridge and culvert assets. Flow depths calculated at bridge locations are significantly overestimated using the NZTA method compared to results derived from hydrodynamic modelling and the rapid model. This research then conducts component-level modelling of culvert assets, due to their identified vulnerability in the transportation network. At a 1:15 geometrical scale, laboratory experiments evaluated the response of different culvert set-ups to tsunami bores. The findings provide a detailed description into overtopping, flow regimes and pressure distributions and give laboratory experiments as validation studies for future numerical modelling and design improvements. Overall, this research performs a multi-modal tsunami inundation assessment, uniting macro-level exposure modelling with micro-level component responses by integrating modelling, exposure analysis, and experimental validation. The findings support refining current tsunami guidelines, improving infrastructure planning, and enhancing community preparedness. Overall, the study’s multi-model approach strengthens many elements of New Zealand’s ability to mitigate and respond to future tsunami events
