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Videos, UC QuakeStudies

A video of a tour of the Christchurch central city Red Zone. The video includes footage of Oxford Terrace, Armagh Street, Colombo Street, Gloucester Street, Hereford Street, High Street, the Westpac Trust Building, Cashel Street, Manchester Street, Poplar Lane, the site of the demolished Convention Centre, and the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

Broken windows on the Orion building on Manchester Street. The photographer comments, "Bob Brown's Hi-Fi was damaged, as you can see, in the Christchurch earthquake on the 22 February 2011. At lot of buildings in the area have been demolished, but this art deco style structure might have not have been put on the demolition list yet".

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A snapshot from GPS Boomerang's SmartBird flight over the Christchurch red zone on 23 December 2012, looking over Hereford Street with the Re:Start container mall visible in the bottom right, Oxford Terrace to the left. The buildings at the end of Cashel Street near Oxford Terrace have been demolished.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of the north side of the ChristChurch Cathedral in Cathedral Square. The front of the building has been propped up with steel bracing but further earthquakes have caused more damage, leaving a gap between the bracing and the wall. The tower has been partially demolished, but the lower section is still visible. Wire fencing has been placed around the entire building. In the background, a crane is rising high above the square.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of the north side of the ChristChurch Cathedral in Cathedral Square. The front of the building has been propped up with steel bracing but further earthquakes have caused more damage, leaving a gap between the bracing and the wall. The tower has been partially demolished, but the lower section is still visible. Wire fencing has been placed around the entire building. In the background, a crane is rising high above the square.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A photograph of the north side of the ChristChurch Cathedral in Cathedral Square. The front of the building has been propped up with steel bracing but further earthquakes have caused more damage, leaving a gap between the bracing and the wall. The tower has been partially demolished, but the lower section is still visible. Wire fencing has been placed around the entire building. In the background, a crane is rising high above the square.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A digitally manipulated image of a broken window on Spicer House. The photographer comments, "One of the office blocks in Christchurch City, New Zealand. As the window has not been fixed I am presuming that this building will be slowly demolished at a later date".

Videos, UC QuakeStudies

A video of an interview with Arts Centre CEO Andre Lovatt about the restoration of the Arts Centre after the 22 February 2011 earthquake. The video also includes a tour of the Arts Centre, including the Boys' High School swimming pool and gymnasium which was exposed after another building was demolished.

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A digitally manipulated image of Latimer Square. The photographer comments, "It is so nice to stand in the middle of Latimer Square on a bright Winter's day and forget the havoc that is around you. The square has hardly been touched by the Christchurch earthquake, but it is surrounded by demolished and damaged buildings".

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A digitally manipulated image of Michael Parekowhai's sculpture 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer' on Madras Street. The photographer comments, "This is the work of New Zealand artist Michael Parekowhai titled 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer'. There are two bronze pianos and a very dominant looking bronze bull on each".

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A digitally manipulated photograph of a stencilled logo for the Christchurch School of Music. The photographer comments, "The Christchurch School of Music donated several old broken pianos to be placed on Gap Filler sites in Christchurch. Gap Filler make the land where buildings have been demolished into places the local inhabitants can enjoy. As in Maths two negatives make a positive".

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A digitally manipulated image of a high-reach excavator demolishing a building. The photographer comments, "After the earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand the demolition of most of the City Centre began. After two years the government thought that the progress was far too slow, so began the start of the automatic demolition. Luckily when the solar powered demolition machines started to cause indiscriminate death and destruction they were isolated to the South Island and unable to cross the seas".

Images, UC QuakeStudies

A digitally manipulated image of light sculptures on Gloucester Street during the LuxCity event. The photographer comments, "This was part of the LuxCity event in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was a way of creating a city of lights on the sites of demolished buildings in the earthquake devastated red zone. 350 architecture and design students from all around New Zealand created and constructed 16 pop up spaces".

Videos, UC QuakeStudies

A video about the training of search dogs for New Zealand Urban Search and Rescue (USAR). The video includes an interview with dog handler, Brenda Woolley, and Tim Drennan, the President of the New Zealand USAR Search Dog Association. Woolley talks about what they look for in search dogs, as well as how they train them. The video also includes footage of a dog being trained in the rubble from a demolished building in Christchurch.

Images, Alexander Turnbull Library

Christchurch City Councillor Aaron Keown has brought a building down on top of himself by hammering it with a mallet in his attempt to chain himself to it. Context: Refers to the start of the demolition of the Christchurch Cathedral in the wake of the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. Aaron Keown has said he will chain himself to the cathedral to stop it being demolished. Quantity: 1 digital cartoon(s).

Research papers, The University of Auckland Library

Two days after the 22 February 2011 M6.3 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, three of the authors conducted a transect of the central city, with the goal of deriving an estimate of building damage levels. Although smaller in magnitude than the M7.1 4 September 2010 Darfield earthquake, the ground accelerations, ground deformation and damage levels in Christchurch central city were more severe in February 2011, and the central city was closed down to the general public. Written and photographic notes of 295 buildings were taken, including construction type, damage level, and whether the building would likely need to be demolished. The results of the transect compared favourably to Civil Defence rapid assessments made over the following month. Now, more than one year and two major aftershocks after the February 2011 earthquake these initial estimates are compared to the current demolition status to provide an updated understanding of the state of central Christchurch.

Images, Alexander Turnbull Library

Refers to the controversy over the decision to demolish the Christchurch Cathedral which was severely damaged in the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. The Anglican Bishop of Christchurch Victoria Mathews says the decision to demolish the cathedral was reached through prayer, great deliberation and with the utmost concern for safety. The Bishop says a number of options were considered before deciding to bring the walls down but the turning point was 23 December 2011, when a series of strong quakes rocked the city. At that stage the Canterbury Earthquake Authority approached the church. "CERA told us that our plans for making safe and retrieving, and then stepping back and making further decisions were no longer adequate." Christchurch City council announced their support on Twitter this afternoon (17 May 2012) - tweeting an endorsement to an immediate pause on demolition of the Cathedral to enable deeper and more open consideration of options. Quantity: 1 digital cartoon(s).

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Earthquake Engineering is facing an extraordinarily challenging era, the ultimate target being set at increasingly higher levels by the demanding expectations of our modern society. The renewed challenge is to be able to provide low-cost, thus more widely affordable, high-seismic-performance structures capable of sustaining a design level earthquake with limited or negligible damage, minimum disruption of business (downtime) or, in more general terms, controllable socio-economical losses. The Canterbury earthquakes sequence in 2010-2011 has represented a tough reality check, confirming the current mismatch between societal expectations over the reality of seismic performance of modern buildings. In general, albeit with some unfortunate exceptions, modern multi-storey buildings performed as expected from a technical point of view, in particular when considering the intensity of the shaking (higher than new code design) they were subjected to. As per capacity design principles, plastic hinges formed in discrete regions, allowing the buildings to sway and stand and people to evacuate. Nevertheless, in many cases, these buildings were deemed too expensive to be repaired and were consequently demolished. Targeting life-safety is arguably not enough for our modern society, at least when dealing with new building construction. A paradigm shift towards damage-control design philosophy and technologies is urgently required. This paper and the associated presentation will discuss motivations, issues and, more importantly, cost-effective engineering solutions to design buildings capable of sustaining low-level of damage and thus limited business interruption after a design level earthquake. Focus will be given to the extensive research and developments in jointed ductile connections based upon controlled rocking & dissipating mechanisms for either reinforced concrete and, more recently, laminated timber structures. An overview of recent on-site applications of such systems, featuring some of the latest technical solutions developed in the laboratory and including proposals for the rebuild of Christchurch, will be provided as successful examples of practical implementation of performance-based seismic design theory and technology.

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

On Tuesday 22 February 2011, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city. The ‘earthquake’ was in fact an aftershock to an earlier 7.1 magnitude earthquake that had occurred on Saturday 4 September 2010. There were a number of key differences between the two events that meant they had dramatically different results for Christchurch and its inhabitants. The 22 February 2011 event resulted in one of New Zealand’s worst natural disasters on record, with 185 fatalities occurring and hundreds more being injured. In addition, a large number of buildings either collapsed or were damaged to the point where they needed to be totally demolished. Since the initial earthquake in September 2010, a large amount of building-related research has been initiated in New Zealand to investigate the impact of the series of seismic events – the major focus of these research projects has been on seismic, structural and geotechnical engineering matters. One project, however, conducted jointly by the University of Canterbury, the Fire Protection Association of New Zealand and BRANZ, has focused on the performance of fire protection systems in the earthquakes and the effectiveness of the systems in the event of post-earthquake fires occurring. Fortunately, very few fires actually broke out following the series of earthquake events in Christchurch, but fire after earthquakes still has significant implications for the built environment in New Zealand, and the collaborative research has provided some invaluable insight into the potential threat posed by post-earthquake fires in buildings. As well as summarising the damage caused to fire protection systems, this paper discusses the flow-on effect for designing structures to withstand post-earthquake fires. One of the underlying issues that will be explored is the existing regulatory framework in New Zealand whereby structural earthquake design and structural design for fire are treated as discrete design scenarios.

Research Papers, Lincoln University

4th September 2010 a 7.1 magnitude earthquake strikes near Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city of approximately 370,000 people. This is followed by a 6.3 magnitude quake on 22nd February 2011 and a 6.4 on 13th June. In February 181 people died and a state of national emergency was declared from 23 February to 30th April. Urban Search and Rescue teams with 150 personnel from New Zealand and 429 from overseas worked tirelessly in addition to Army, Police and Fire services. Within the central business district 1,000 buildings (of 4,000) are expected to be demolished. An estimated 10,000 houses require demolition and over 100,000 were damaged. Meanwhile the over 7,000 aftershocks have become part of the “new normal” for us all. During this time how have libraries supported their staff? What changes have been made to services? What are the resourcing opportunities? This presentation will provide a personal view from Lincoln University, Te Whare Wanaka o Aoraki, Library Teaching and Learning. Lincoln is New Zealand's third oldest university having been founded in 1878. Publicly owned and operated it is New Zealand's specialist land-based university. Lincoln is based on the Canterbury Plains, 22 kilometres south of Christchurch. On campus there was mostly minor damage to buildings while in the Library 200,000 volumes were thrown from the shelves. I will focus on the experiences of the Disaster Team and on our experiences with hosting temporarily displaced staff and students from the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, Library, Learning & Information Services. Experiences from two other institutions will be highlighted: Christchurch City Libraries, Ngā Kete Wānanga-o-Ōtautahi. Focusing on the Māori Services Team and the Ngā Pounamu Māori and Ngāi Tahu collections. The Central library located within the red zone cordon has been closed since February, the Central library held the Ngā Pounamu Māori and Ngai Tahu collections, the largest Māori collections in the Christchurch public library network. The lack of access to these collections changed the way the Māori Services Team, part of the larger Programmes, Events and Learning Team at Christchurch City Libraries were able to provide services to their community resulting in new innovative outreach programmes and a focus on promotion of online resources. On 19th December the “temporary” new and smaller Central library Peterborough opened. The retrieved Ngā Pounamu Māori and Ngai Tahu collections "Ngā rakau teitei e iwa”, have since been re-housed and are once again available for use by the public. Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu. This organisation, established by the Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu Act 1996, services the statutory rights for the people of Ngāi Tahu descent and ensures that the benefits of their Treaty Claim Settlement are enjoyed by Ngāi Tahu now and in the future. Ngāi Tahu are the indigenous Māori people of the southern islands of New Zealand - Te Waipounamu. The iwi (people) hold the rangatiratanga or tribal authority to over 80 per cent of the South Island. With their headquarters based in the central business they have also had to be relocated to temporary facilities. This included their library/archive collection of print resources, art works and taonga (cultural treasures).

Research papers, University of Canterbury Library

Previous earthquakes demonstrated destructive effects of soil-structure interaction on structural response. For example, in the 1970 Gediz earthquake in Turkey, part of a factory was demolished in a town 135 km from the epicentre, while no other buildings in the town were damaged. Subsequent investigations revealed that the fundamental period of vibration of the factory was approximately equal to that of the underlying soil. This alignment provided a resonance effect and led to collapse of the structure. Another dramatic example took place in Adapazari, during the 1999 Kocaeli earthquake where several foundations failed due to either bearing capacity exceedance or foundation uplifting, consequently, damaging the structure. Finally, the Christchurch 2012 earthquakes have shown that significant nonlinear action in the soil and soil-foundation interface can be expected due to high levels of seismic excitation and spectral acceleration. This nonlinearity, in turn, significantly influenced the response of the structure interacting with the soil-foundation underneath. Extensive research over more than 35 years has focused on the subject of seismic soil-structure interaction. However, since the response of soil-structure systems to seismic forces is extremely complex, burdened by uncertainties in system parameters and variability in ground motions, the role of soil-structure interaction on the structural response is still controversial. Conventional design procedures suggest that soil-structure interaction effects on the structural response can be conservatively ignored. However, more recent studies show that soil-structure interaction can be either beneficial or detrimental, depending on the soil-structure-earthquake scenarios considered. In view of the above mentioned issues, this research aims to utilise a comprehensive and systematic probabilistic methodology, as the most rational way, to quantify the effects of soil-structure interaction on the structural response considering both aleatory and epistemic uncertainties. The goal is achieved by examining the response of established rheological single-degree-of-freedom systems located on shallow-foundation and excited by ground motions with different spectral characteristics. In this regard, four main phases are followed. First, the effects of seismic soil-structure interaction on the response of structures with linear behaviour are investigated using a robust stochastic approach. Herein, the soil-foundation interface is modelled by an equivalent linear cone model. This phase is mainly considered to examine the influence of soil-structure interaction on the approach that has been adopted in the building codes for developing design spectrum and defining the seismic forces acting on the structure. Second, the effects of structural nonlinearity on the role of soil-structure interaction in modifying seismic structural response are studied. The same stochastic approach as phase 1 is followed, while three different types of structural force-deflection behaviour are examined. Third, a systematic fashion is carried out to look for any possible correlation between soil, structural, and system parameters and the degree of soil-structure interaction effects on the structural response. An attempt is made to identify the key parameters whose variation significantly affects the structural response. In addition, it is tried to define the critical range of variation of parameters of consequent. Finally, the impact of soil-foundation interface nonlinearity on the soil-structure interaction analysis is examined. In this regard, a newly developed macro-element covering both material and geometrical soil-foundation interface nonlinearity is implemented in a finite-element program Raumoko 3D. This model is then used in an extensive probabilistic simulation to compare the effects of linear and nonlinear soil-structure interaction on the structural response. This research is concluded by reviewing the current design guidelines incorporating soil-structure interaction effects in their design procedures. A discussion is then followed on the inadequacies of current procedures based on the outcomes of this study.