Summmary Newsletter Three - 14 October
Dear Colleagues;
This is the third summary newsletter that I have prepared on behalf of the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering (NZSEE) to brief technical groups on activities and resources pertaining to the Darfield (Canterbury) Earthquake of 4 September.
The NZSEE Clearinghouse has a growing number of reports available for you to read. The social science research community joined this week and we look forward to their contributions to the clearinghouse repository. Please contact Quincy Ma if you have something that you would like to post on that web site for both colleagues and the public to read.
The Canterbury Structural Group (CSG) and the NZSEE hosted a second forum on " The earthquake and what do we do next" on 6 October, which began by reviewing the recovery from an insurance perspective and announced the establishment of an engineering advisory group tasked with developing technical guidelines for the reconstruction. The (national and local) government perspectives were presented, with their focus on both technical support and streamlining the consenting process to handle the large volume, while maintaining the quality of construction.
A NZ Institute of Architects (NZIA) presentation to the forum outlined their appointment of Ian Athfield as an architectural ambassador to provide a focus and to act as a spokesperson for the NZIA. (In stark contrast to the political caricature of the Mayor appointing him to redesign Christchurch!) The NZIA are holding a public exhibition of things related to the earthquake in late November to provide a focus for the community and to collate information in order to make meaningful decisions in the latter stages.
Geotechnical researchers, consultants and authorities are coordinating their efforts to study the occurrence and nature of liquefaction, and implications for the future. They are making good use of the satellite and aerial photography datasets captured since the earthquake, and have identified information that still needs collecting before it is lost.
The CSG, NZ Geotechnical Society and NZSEE are holding a joint forum in the College of Engineering E1 lecture theatre at 1800 on Wed 20 October. The forum focus will most likely be the soon-to-be-released Government report on restoration.
There are several overseas investigation teams planning to arrive over the next month. An ASCE structural engineering team conducted a brief URM building investigation over the past weekend. Next week, the EERI, PEER and GEER teams who visited a few weeks ago are presenting their observations in a webcast starting Tue 19 Oct at 11:45 (NZDT) being presented at University of California, Berkeley.
US and Australian Engineering Lifelines teams are here this week. Tom O’Rourke, of the US based EERI and GEER team, was interviewed on TVNZ Breakfast (view the video clip). There is a combined TCLEE and CIPMA debriefing on Friday morning.
At least two conferences have already held special sessions presenting lessons from the earthquake. The organising committee for the NZSEE's April Pacific Conference on Earthquake Engineering have extended the final abstract submission date to 29 October and are looking forward to a large number of presentations on findings from the earthquake. Please consider whether you and your colleagues can contribute your observations and experience.
Please forward this message to others who are not on the distribution list and sign up below if you would like to receive future issues. Finally, I welcome suggestions for information that you would find useful in next week’s issue.
With regards,
Bruce Deam
Canterbury Technical Clearinghouse & Visiting Scientist Coordinator
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