Peter Wood writes on the importance of resuming commerce after an emergency.
Much important information has been gleaned from the Darfield earthquake and much more will become available in the weeks and months to come.
How that information is used and disseminated and the response to the findings will have major implications for increasing resilience to such events, in New Zealand and
internationally.
By "resilience", I don't just mean the physical resilience of buildings and infrastructure to the impacts of an earthquake but also how resilient society is - and what we can do to increase that.
The New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering (NZSEE) has 700 members including professional engineers, seismologists, geologists and other scientists with an interest in earthquake phenomena and the effects of earthquakes.
It helps fund research, facilitates technical debate, produces technical guidelines and supports studies of overseas earthquakes and tsunamis to increase our understanding of the effects on infrastructure and society.
The society's work has had significant impact internationally, in developing important concepts, attitudes and best practices in earthquake engineering.
Many of our members are at the heart of the response to the Darfield earthquake.
Wide-ranging research being carried out in New Zealand, particularly at the universities of Auckland, Canterbury and Massey, include studies of the response of existing unreinforced masonry and reinforced concrete buildings, and techniques to enhance their capacity to resist ground motion.
Issues such as hazard management, land planning and social issues are also investigated.
What is already clear from this event, when you compare it with recent events in Haiti and Chile, is that the buildup of resources, knowledge, preparation and capability that has occurred recently in New Zealand is paying off.
We still have a long way to go. But we have the basis for good practice and must continue to develop and build on that.
An important area is how we can best support local councils in developing and managing their responses. A good example of this work is the swift response in Christchurch in assessing the safety of buildings, which can be partly attributed to the availability of "The Building Safety Evaluation during a State of Emergency - Guidelines for Territorial Authorities" manual. This was developed and published by the society with support from the Department of Building and Housing.
It was developed from international and local experience, particularly the 2007 Gisborne earthquake, and further refined by the society's former president Dave Brunsdon and his New Zealand team, which went to Western Sumatra following the Padang earthquake last year.
They worked with building safety assessors. gaining vital information and developing further the procedures now adopted in Christchurch.
Dave has worked with territorial authorities providing training for building officials on carrying out safety assessment processes outlined in the manual.
Following the earthquake last Saturday, Dave and Christchurch's building controls manager John Buchan were able to swiftly pull their building assessment team together.
They were joined by other experts including Dr Clark Hyland, a specialist consulting engineer in fatigue and earthquake engineering and a member of the society's management committee.
The team is working flat out. Over the weekend they assessed 1200 buildings, of which they identified 130 buildings that would need further assessment.
Notices were then posted on these buildings. Red signifies a building cannot be entered, yellow that there is restricted use and green that it can be entered.
Extensive evidence shows that what affects society most following a natural disaster is the rate at which it can recommence normal commerce. The sooner you can say whether buildings are safe, the better.
Buildings owners in Christchurch were understandably anxious to find out what the situation was regarding their buildings. Their livelihoods depend on it.
Thanks to the existing preparations, Dr Hyland was able to rapidly establish a database of information. Property owners could ring the council and be told instantly what the posting was for their building.
Having those procedures in place means that the city centre will be closed for as short a period as possible.
Last year, the Government launched the Natural Hazards Research Platform, a pioneering collaborative research arrangement with an annual research budget of $14 million for the next 10 years.
It is hosted by GNS Science (Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences) with the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) and partnered by Auckland, Massey and Canterbury universities and other research groups.
It will combine research on causes and mechanism of natural hazards, physical, social and economic consequences and also how communities can build resilience to deal with them.
We need to review the information that comes out of Christchurch for all disciplines, including seismology, geotechnical, structural, energy management and social.
We need to look at what has and has not worked, then use this information to identify gaps in our knowledge and how we can increase the resilience for society.
New Zealand's local councils are already starting to work together to plan responses to natural disasters.
But a message they must take from Christchurch is that there needs to be urgency to such planning.
Peter Wood is president of the New Zealand Society of Earthquake Engineers with 35 years' experience in research, consulting and policy development on natural hazard mitigation and emergency management.
He is an emergency management advisor with the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management and part of the Beehive-based team co-ordinating the response to the earthquake in Canterbury.
