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Images, UC QuakeStudies

Scaffolding covering the outer walls of the James Hight Building at the University of Canterbury. The photograph has been captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The repair work on the buildings at the University of Canterbury looks similar to the scenes in the CBD".

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Roading machinery parked on the side of River Road. The road is under repair, but has not yet been resealed. The photographer comments, "Looking east to Banks Ave-Dallington Tce. River Rd nearly ready for re-sealing. Over the next year, the road subsided and was repaired 3 or 4 times".

Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

The research presented in this thesis investigated the environmental impacts of structural design decisions across the life of buildings located in seismic regions. In particular, the impacts of expected earthquake damage were incorporated into a traditional life cycle assessment (LCA) using a probabilistic method, and links between sustainable and resilient design were established for a range of case-study buildings designed for different seismic performance objectives. These links were quantified using a metric herein referred to as the seismic carbon risk, which represents the expected environmental impacts and resource use indicators associated with earthquake damage during buildings’ life. The research was broken into three distinct parts: (1) a city-level evaluation of the environmental impacts of demolitions following the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence in New Zealand, (2) the development of a probabilistic framework to incorporate earthquake damage into LCA, and (3) using case-study buildings to establish links between sustainable and resilient design. The first phase of the research focused on the environmental impacts of demolitions in Christchurch, New Zealand following the 2010/2011 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence. This large case study was used to investigate the environmental impact of the demolition of concrete buildings considering the embodied carbon and waste stream distribution. The embodied carbon was considered here as kilograms of CO2 equivalent that occurs on production, construction, and waste management stage. The results clearly demonstrated the significant environmental impacts that can result from moderate and large earthquakes in urban areas, and the importance of including environmental considerations when making post-earthquake demolition decisions. The next phase of the work introduced a framework for incorporating the impacts of expected earthquake damage based on a probabilistic approach into traditional LCA to allow for a comparison of seismic design decisions using a carbon lens. Here, in addition to initial construction impacts, the seismic carbon risk was quantified, including the impacts of seismic repair activities and total loss scenarios assuming reconstruction in case of non-reparability. A process-based LCA was performed to obtain the environmental consequence functions associated with structural and non-structural repair activities for multiple environmental indicators. In the final phase of the work, multiple case-study buildings were used to investigate the seismic consequences of different structural design decisions for buildings in seismic regions. Here, two case-study buildings were designed to multiple performance objectives, and the upfront carbon costs, and well as the seismic carbon risk across the building life were compared. The buildings were evaluated using the framework established in phase 2, and the results demonstrated that the seismic carbon risk can significantly be reduced with only minimal changes to the upfront carbon for buildings designed for a higher base shear or with seismic protective systems. This provided valuable insight into the links between resilient and sustainable design decisions. Finally, the results and observations from the work across the three phases of research described above were used to inform a discussion on important assumptions and topics that need to be considered when quantifying the environmental impacts of earthquake damage on buildings. These include: selection of a non-repairable threshold (e.g. a value beyond which a building would be demolished rather than repaired), the time value of carbon (e.g. when in the building life the carbon is released), the changing carbon intensity of structural materials over time, and the consideration of deterministic vs. probabilistic results. Each of these topics was explored in some detail to provide a clear pathway for future work in this area.

Images, eqnz.chch.2010

On the day the the government and council jointly announced who will fund what, for the Christchurch rebuild, a rainbow appears over the rebuild of the Latimer Hotel. For the central city the figures are: NZ$4.9 billion with $2.9 billion coming from central government and $1.9 billion coming from the local city council (us ratepayers in Christc...

Videos, UC QuakeStudies

A video of the removal of the earthquake-damaged Medway Street bridge from the banks of the Avon River. The video shows members of the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team removing the bridge and preparing it for transport to the Ferrymead Heritage Park. It will remain at the park until a permanent home can be found for it as an earthquake memorial.

Audio, Radio New Zealand

Some Canterbury homeowners are worried that missed earthquake damage to concrete slabs could result in another big bill for the taxpayer. This comes only weeks after EQC told Checkpoint that the cost of mis-scoped damage or defective repairs following the Canterbury earthquakes could cost up to $1 billion. This includes $450 million for botched repairs, including badly repaired rubble ring foundations, and $300 million for an ex gratia payment to about 1000 over-cap onsold homeowners. But some Canterbury homeowners who bought after the earthquakes - and did their due diligence - are only discovering damage to their concrete slab foundations now. Logan Church reports.