A photograph of a tug-of-war contest at CityUps. In the background is a temporary illuminated sculpture titled GlowCity. GlowCity was created by students from Unitec for CityUps - a 'city of the future for one night only', and the main event of FESTA 2014.
A photograph of Melanie Oliver, director of The Physics Room (left), and two others, presenting at Urban T(act)ics. Urban T(act)ics was a symposium held at The Physics Room to explore tactics and acts of urbanism. The event was organised by Barnaby Bennett and was part of FESTA 2013.
A close-up photograph of a temporary installation titled Highlight in the Re:START mall car park on Cashel Street. There are images projected onto the sides of the installation. The installation was created by students from Unitec Architecture Department for Canterbury Tales - a carnivalesque procession which was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a temporary structure, titled Continuum, being installed for CityUps. CityUps was a 'city of the future for one night only', and the main event of FESTA 2014. Continuum was created by students from the University of Auckland, in partnership with Excuse My French Crepe Cart.
A photograph of a temporary installation titled Continuum, which was created by students from the University of Auckland, in partnership with Excuse My French Crepe Cart. Continuum was part of CityUps - a 'city of the future for one night only', and the main event of FESTA 2014.
A photograph Deputy Mayor Vicki Buck (left) standing next to balloons that are about to be released. Buck was the MC of the event. Worries and wishes have been written on the balloon. The photograph was taken at The Worry Bug book launch at St Albans School on 8 July 2015.
An image used as a cover photo on the All Right? Facebook page to promote events held at Rehua Marae for Matariki 2014. The image reads, "Celebrate Matariki. Rehua Marae Whānau Day. 28 June, 10am - 3.30pm." All Right? posted the image on their Facebook page on 23 June 2014 at 7:48pm.
A scanned copy of a black and white photograph depicting spectators to a student race along the Avon River. This was an annual event as part of capping week during the 1950s and 60s. The photograph was taken in the 1950s and was sourced from archives held in Macmillan Brown Library.
A scanned copy of a black and white photograph depicting a student race along the Avon River. This was an annual event as part of capping week during the 1950s and 60s. The photograph was taken in the 1950s and was sourced from archives held in Macmillan Brown Library.
A video montage of Canterbury Tales, a carnivalesque procession through the central city, led by Free Theatre Christchurch. The film depicts the construction and set up, through to the main public events. It also includes interviews with Peter Faulkenberg (Canterbury Tales and Free Theatre Christchurch Artistic Director) and George Parker (Canterbury Tales and Free Theatre Christchurch Producer).
A photograph of a large-scale puppet titled The Knight, which is part of the Canterbury Tales procession. The puppet is on the back of a truck which is entering a Re:START mall car park. Canterbury Tales was created by Free Theatre Christchurch, and was the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of a floating installation titled The River on the Avon River. The installation consists of two armchairs, a table and floor lamp situated on a grass-covered platform, with net curtains hanging from the frame. It was created by students from Lincoln University's School of Landscape Architecturefor Canterbury Tales, a carnivalesque procession and the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of painted bird cut-outs hanging from a tree next to the Avon River on Oxford Terrace, near the Worcester Street bridge. The decorations were part of an installation titled The River, created by students from Lincoln University's School of Landscape Architecture for Canterbury Tales, a carnivalesque procession and the main event of FESTA 2013.
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Earthquake Commission Public Meeting at the SBS Events Centre. Reid Stiven, representing the Earthquake Commission (EQC), responds to a query during the meeting, which was held to inform the public about making claims to the EQC relating the 7.1 magnitude earthquake on 4 September. The meeting was hosted by Rangitata MP Jo Goodhew (left)".
A photograph of a floating installation on the Avon River. The installation consists of four chairs and a table situated on a grass-covered platform, with net curtains hanging from the frame. It was created by students from Lincoln University's School of Landscape Architecture for Canterbury Tales, a carnivalesque procession and the main event of FESTA 2013.
A PDF copy of the site map for CityUps. CityUps was a 'city of the future for one night only', and the main event of FESTA 2014. It was held on vacant sites at the intersection of Lichfield Street, Manchester Street and High Street. Architecture students from Unitec, The University of Auckland and CPIT collaborated with local businesses to create large-scale, temporary structures to entertain the public.
A photograph of a floating installation on the Avon River. The installation consists of dresser, stool and lamp, situated on a grass-covered platform, with net curtains hanging from the frame. It was created by students from Lincoln University's School of Landscape Architecture for Canterbury Tales, a carnivalesque procession and the main event of FESTA 2013.
A piper stands beside the twisted Medway Street Bridge during the River of Flowers memorial event. A concrete barrier blocking off the bridge is adorned with flowers. The photographer comments, "One year on, Riverside residents gather for a 2 minute silence and to cast flowers in the river. Riverside residents met at the Medway St bridge to commemorate the anniversary of the 22/2/11 quake".
Flowers float under the twisted Medway Street Bridge during the River of Flowers memorial event. A colourful cross has been attached to the centre of the bridge. The photographer comments, "One year on, Riverside residents gather for a 2 minute silence and to cast flowers in the river. Riverside residents met at the Medway St bridge to commemorate the anniversary of the 22/2/11 quake".
This paper presents preliminary field observations on the performance of selected steel structures in Christchurch during the earthquake series of 2010 to 2011. This comprises 6 damaging earthquakes, on 4 September and 26 December 2010, February 22, June 6 and two on June 13, 2011. Most notable of these was the 4 September event, at Ms7.1 and MM7 (MM as observed in the Christchurch CBD) and most intense was the 22 February event at Ms6.3 and MM9-10 within the CBD. Focus is on performance of concentrically braced frames, eccentrically braced frames, moment resisting frames and industrial storage racks. With a few notable exceptions, steel structures performed well during this earthquake series, to the extent that inelastic deformations were less than what would have been expected given the severity of the recorded strong motions. Some hypotheses are formulated to explain this satisfactory performance. http://db.nzsee.org.nz/SpecialIssue/44%284%290297.pdf
The current study examined the psychological effects of recurring earthquake aftershocks in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, which began in September 2010. Although it has been identified that exposure to ongoing adverse events such as continuing terrorist attacks generally leads to the development of increasing symptomology over time, differences in perceived controllability and blame between man-made and natural adverse events may contribute to differences in symptom trajectories. Residents of two Christchurch suburbs differentially affected by the earthquakes (N = 128) were assessed on measures of acute stress disorder, generalised anxiety, and depression, at two time points approximately 4-5 months apart, in order to determine whether symptoms intensified or declined over time in the face of ongoing aftershocks. At time 1, clinically significant levels of acute stress were identified in both suburbs, whereas clinical elevations in depression and anxiety were only evident in the most affected suburb. By time 2, both suburbs had fallen below the clinical range on all three symptom types, identifying a pattern of habituation to the aftershocks. Acute stress symptoms at time 2 were the most highly associated with the aftershocks, compared to symptoms of generalised anxiety and depression which were identified by participant reports to be more likely associated with other earthquake-related factors, such as insurance troubles and less frequent socialisation. The finding that exposure to ongoing earthquake aftershocks leads to a decline in symptoms over time may have important implications for the assessment of traumatic stress-related disorders, and provision of services following natural, as compared to man-made, adverse events.
In recent Canterbury earthquakes, structures have performed well in terms of life safety but the estimated total cost of the rebuild was as high as $40 billion. The major contributors to this cost are repair/demolition/rebuild cost, the resulting downtime and business interruption. For this reason, the authors are exploring alternate building systems that can minimize the downtime and business interruption due to building damage in an earthquake; thereby greatly reducing the financial implications of seismic events. In this paper, a sustainable and demountable precast reinforced concrete (RC) frame system in which the precast members are connected via steel tubes/plates or steel angles/plates and high strength friction grip (HSFG) bolts is introduced. In the proposed system, damaged structural elements in seismic frames can be easily replaced with new ones; thereby making it an easily and quickly repairable and a low-loss system. The column to foundation connection in the proposed system can be designed either as fixed or pinned depending on the requirement of strength and stiffness. In a fixed base frame system, ground storey columns will also be damaged along with beams in seismic events, which are to be replaced after seismic events; whereas in a pin base frame only beams (which are easy to replace) will be damaged. Low to medium rise (3-6 storey) precast RC frame buildings with fixed and pin bases are analyzed in this paper; and their lateral capacity, lateral stiffness and natural period are scrutinized to better understand the pros and cons of the demountable precast frame system with fixed and pin base connections.
The Global Earthquake Model’s (GEM) Earthquake Consequences Database (GEMECD) aims to develop, for the first time, a standardised framework for collecting and collating geocoded consequence data induced by primary and secondary seismic hazards to different types of buildings, critical facilities, infrastructure and population, and relate this data to estimated ground motion intensity via the USGS ShakeMap Atlas. New Zealand is a partner of the GEMECD consortium and to-date has contributed with 7 events to the database, of which 4 are localised in the South Pacific area (Newcastle 1989; Luzon 1990; South of Java 2006 and Samoa Islands 2009) and 3 are NZ-specific events (Edgecumbe 1987; Darfield 2010 and Christchurch 2011). This contribution to GEMECD represented a unique opportunity for collating, comparing and reviewing existing damage datasets and harmonising them into a common, openly accessible and standardised database, from where the seismic performance of New Zealand buildings can be comparatively assessed. This paper firstly provides an overview of the GEMECD database structure, including taxonomies and guidelines to collect and report on earthquake-induced consequence data. Secondly, the paper presents a summary of the studies implemented for the 7 events, with particular focus on the Darfield (2010) and Christchurch (2011) earthquakes. Finally, examples of specific outcomes and potentials for NZ from using and processing GEMECD are presented, including: 1) the rationale for adopting the GEM taxonomy in NZ and any need for introducing NZ-specific attributes; 2) a complete overview of the building typological distribution in the Christchurch CBD prior to the Canterbury earthquakes and 3) some initial correlations between the level and extent of earthquake-induced physical damage to buildings, building safety/accessibility issues and the induced human casualties.
This thesis investigates landscape disturbance history in Westland since 1350 AD. Specifically, I test the hypothesis that large-magnitude regional episodes of natural disturbance have periodically devastated portions of the landscape and forest, and that these were caused by infrequent earthquakes along the Alpine Fault. Forest stand history reconstruction was used to determine the timing and extent of erosion and sedimentation events that initiated new forest cohorts in a 1412 ha study area in the Karangarua River catchment, south Westland. Over 85 % of the study area was disturbed sufficiently by erosion/sedimentation since 1350 AD to initiate new forest cohorts. During this time four episodes of catchment-wide disturbance impacted the study area, and these took place about 1825 AD ± 5 years (Ruera episode), 1715 AD ± 5 years (Sparkling episode), 1615 AD ± 5 years (McTaggart episode), and 1445 AD ± 15 years (Junction episode). The three most recent episodes disturbed 10 %, 35-40 % and 32-50 % respectively of the study area. The Junction episode disturbed at least 6 % of the study area, but elimination of evidence by more recent disturbances prevented an upper limit being defined. The three earliest episodes correspond to the date-ranges for three Alpine Fault earthquakes from geological data, and are the only episodes of disturbance within each date-range. An earthquake cause is also consistent with features of the disturbance record: large portions of the study area were disturbed, disturbance occurred on all types 'of landforms, and terrace surfaces were abandoned upstream of the Alpine Fault. On this basis erosion/sedimentation induced by Alpine Fault earthquakes has disturbed 14-20 % of the land surface in the study area per century. Storms and other non-seismic erosional processes have disturbed 3-4 % per century. To examine the importance of the Alpine Fault earthquakes to forest disturbance throughout Westland, I collated all available data on conifer stand age structures in the region and identified dates of disturbance events from 55 even-aged cohorts of trees. Three region-wide episodes of forest disturbance since 1350 AD were found in this sample, and these matched the three Alpine Fault earthquake-caused episodes found in the Karangarua. Forest disturbance at these times was widespread across Westland over at least 200 km from Paringa to Hokitika, and originated from both tree fall and erosion processes. This disturbance history can explain the long-observed regional conifer forest pattern in Westland, of a predominance of similar-sized stands of trees and a relative lack of small-sized (young) stands. The many similar-sized stands are a consequence of synchronous forest disturbance and re-establishment accompanying the infrequent Alpine Fault earthquakes, while the dominance of mature stands of trees and relative lack of young small-sized trees in stands is explained by the long lapsed time since the last Alpine Fault earthquake (c. 280 years). I applied the landscape disturbance history information to the existing geological data to reconstruct the paleoseismicity of the Alpine Fault since 1350 AD. Best estimates for the timing of the most recent three rupture events from these data are 1715 AD ± 5 years, 1615 AD ± 5 years and 1445 AD ± 15 years. Earthquake recurrence intervals were variable, ranging from about 100 years to at least 280 years (the lapsed time since the last event). All three events caused forest and geomorphic disturbance over at least a 200 km section of Fault between the Karangarua and Hokitika Rivers, and were probably single rupture events. Suppressions in cross dated tree-ring chronologies in the western South Island suggest that the last rupture occurred in 1717 AD, and extended as a single rupture from Haupiri to Fiordland, a distance along the Fault of 375 km.
The Porters Pass fault (PPF) is a prominent element of the Porters Pass-Amberley Fault Zone (PPAFZ) which forms a broad zone of active earth deformation ca 100 km long, 60-90 km west and north of Christchurch. For a distance of ca 40 km the PPF is defined by a series of discontinuous Holocene active traces between the Rakaia and Waimakariri Rivers. The amount of slip/event and the timing of paleoearthquakes are crucial components needed to estimate the earthquake potential of a fault. Movement was assumed to be, coseismic and was quantified by measuring displaced geomorphic features using either tape measure or surveying equipment. Clustering of offset data suggests that four to five earthquakes occurred on the PPF during the Holocene and these range between ca 5-7 m/event. Timing information was obtained from four trenches excavated across the fault and an auger adjacent to the fault. Organic samples from these sites were radiocarbon dated and used in conjunction with data from previous studies to identify the occurrence of at least four earthquakes at 8500 ± 200, 5300 ± 700, 2500 ± 200 and 1000 ± 100 years B.P. Evidence suggests that an additional event is also possible at 6200 ± 500 years B.P. The ~1000, 5300 and 6200 years B.P. paleoearthquakes were previously unrecognised, while the 500 year event previously inferred from rock-avalanche data has been discarded. The present data set produces recurrence intervals of ~2000-2500 years for the Holocene. The identification of only one Holocene PPF rupture to the west of Red Lakes indicates the presence of a segment boundary that prevents the propagation of rupture beyond this point. This is consistent with displacement data and results in slip rates of 0.5-0.7 mm/yr and 2.5-3.4 mm/yr to the west and east of Red Lakes respectively. It is possible that the nearby extensional Red Hill Fault influences PPF rupture propagation. The combination of geometric, slip rate and timing data has enabled the magnitude of prehistoric earthquakes on the PPF to be estimated. These magnitudes range from an average of between 6.9 for a fault rupture from Waimakariri River to Red Lakes, to a maximum of 7.4 that ruptures the entire length of the PPAFZ, including the full length of the PPF. These estimates are approximately consistent with previous magnitude estimates along the full length of the PPAFZ of between 7.0 and 7.5.
Liquefaction features and the geologic environment in which they formed were carefully studied at two sites near Lincoln in southwest Christchurch. We undertook geomorphic mapping, excavated trenches, and obtained hand cores in areas with surficial evidence for liquefaction and areas where no surficial evidence for liquefaction was present at two sites (Hardwick and Marchand). The liquefaction features identified include (1) sand blows (singular and aligned along linear fissures), (2) blisters or injections of subhorizontal dikes into the topsoil, (3) dikes related to the blows and blisters, and (4) a collapse structure. The spatial distribution of these surface liquefaction features correlates strongly with the ridges of scroll bars in meander settings. In addition, we discovered paleoliquefaction features, including several dikes and a sand blow, in excavations at the sites of modern liquefaction. The paleoliquefaction event at the Hardwick site is dated at A.D. 908-1336, and the one at the Marchand site is dated at A.D. 1017-1840 (95% confidence intervals of probability density functions obtained by Bayesian analysis). If both events are the same, given proximity of the sites, the time of the event is A.D. 1019-1337. If they are not, the one at the Marchand site could have been much younger. Taking into account a preliminary liquefaction-triggering threshold of equivalent peak ground acceleration for an Mw 7.5 event (PGA7:5) of 0:07g, existing magnitude-bounded relations for paleoliquefaction, and the timing of the paleoearthquakes and the potential PGA7:5 estimated for regional faults, we propose that the Porters Pass fault, Alpine fault, or the subduction zone faults are the most likely sources that could have triggered liquefaction at the study sites. There are other nearby regional faults that may have been the source, but there is no paleoseismic data with which to make the temporal link.
A photograph of Andrew Just from F3 Design (left), Jessica Halliday, Director of FESTA, and Martin Trusttum, CPIT Faculty of Creative Arts, on the corner of St Asaph Street and Madras Street where the temporary ArtBox gallery is to be constructed. The photograph was taken during a public talk about the temporary studio and gallery space. The event was part of FESTA 2012.
In the programme this week - the former New Zealand cricket captain Stephen Fleming talks about plans for a charity cricket match to raise funds for victims of the Canterbury earthquake. We hear about the role of sports chaplaincy in New Zealand sports teams, Blyth Tait talks about his return to top level Equestrian competition after a seven year absence and one of the country's premier mountain biking events, the Karapoti Classic, near Wellington is underway again.
A close-up photograph of a floating installation titled The River on the Avon River. The installation consists of four chairs and a table situated on a grass-covered platform, with net curtains hanging from the frame. It was created by students from Lincoln University's School of Landscape Architecture for Canterbury Tales, a carnivalesque procession and the main event of FESTA 2013.
Johanna McCord moved to Christchurch just before the first earthquake in September nearly four years ago. But she fell in love with the city, regardless of its tectonic troubles. Johanna has just set up a blog called 'We Built This City' which is designed to showcase some of Christchurch's businesses and events. More than an information hub, it takes a personal look at some of the people who are really making a difference in the quake struck city.