Learning From Earthquakes Visitors Debriefing

Thursday 17 March 18:00-20:00.
Christchurch Netball Centre, South Hagley Park

This Canterbury Technical Clearinghouse meeting summary was prepared by Bruce Deam on behalf of the NZSEE.

The 58 attending the Debriefing were welcomed by Bruce on behalf of the NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering and the format of the presentation and discussion was outlined.

Stefano Pampanin (University of Canterbury) also welcomed those attending, particularly those visiting the large-scale "Christchurch Laboratory" who were helping with observations now and would be collaboratively analysing the information over the coming months and years. He presented the Seismic Retrofit Solutions project framework for retrofitting NZ buildings, indicating that the aim is to have new-era 2050 buildings on the drawing board today. He then outlined the structural observations and reports currently being prepared.
Stefano's presentation

Kelvin Berryman (Natural Hazards Platform Manager) outlined how The Platform provided an umbrella science agency for government and university research in NZ. He indicated that:

There is a need to ounderstand the mechanics of the earthquake
The earthquake has produced one of NZ's greatest ever migrations and will require rebuilding of a significant portion of a major city
All disciplines, and particularly social sciences, need to contribute and be well interconnected as they work toward a knowledge-informed rebuild.
Science is well engaged in the decision-making process after the near-miss in September
While The Platofrm and its government imposed objective of minimising the amount of proposal writing is only new, the community is working well together
The greatest challenges are still to keep communicating, both between and within teams

Mary Comerio ( EERI Team Leader, UC Berkeley) outlined some of the grand challenges after the February earthquake:

Seismology and aftershocks: how is theis going to be incorporated into design?
How will geotechnical information impact design?
How does Soil-Structure Interaction affect design?
How is community resilience affected by (for e.g.) tagging procedures and decision making
How is engineering design going to change in response to both good and poor structural performance

She then presented an overview of what the teams had been investigating and invited further collaboration with both visiting and NZ teams:

Communication channels: communicating risk and use of social media
Preparedness and resilience of heathcare
Documentation of buildings already investigated following September
The Earthquake Performance Evaluation Programme resurveys of pods around Strong Motion recording stations
The textbook examples of failures of industrial facilities and non-structural elements

Mary's presentation

Matthew Free ( EEFIT Team Leader, Arup) indicated that the team had been busy investigating a very broad range of earthquake-related phenomena. He presented several slides illustrating techniques used to relevel substantial buildings that could be employed in Christchurch. Matthew's presentation

Sean Wilkinson (EEFIT Team) presented examples of terrestrial scanning of buildings Sean's presentation

Invitation

Dear Colleagues;

Thank you to those who were able to attend and contribute to Monday
evening's meeting to introduce yourselves, what your teams are
investigating and converse with others with similar interests.

As agreed at the end of the meeting, I have arranged a follow-up
debriefing for tomorrow (Thursday 17 March) 1800-2000. This will be in the
Christchurch Netball Centre, South Hagley Park (Cnr Hagley and Moorehouse
Aves), with drinks and nibbles from 1730.

The agenda is still under discussion, but I envisage a ten minute
presentation from each team that addresses a question or two like "How can
Christchurch best recover in the short and long terms" or "What are the
objectives for the short and long-term research collaborations being
developed as a result of the visit".

I will discuss improved questions with the team leaders and programme the
presentations to minimise repetition of the technical observations between
presentations. Some local engineering leaders are being invited to the
debriefing (with a total of about 120 people). There will also be a
Technical Clearinghouse Meeting for the engineering community on Tuesday
(see http://nzeng.info/ctc/).

We look forward to seeing those who can join the presentations and
discussions tomorrow. There is no need to reply if you attended on Monday,
but if you were not able to attend then or invite others for tomorrow,
could you please reply to this message indicating the number of additional
people attending.

Kind regards,
Bruce Deam
Canterbury Technical Clearinghouse Coordinator
bruce.deam@canterbury.ac.nz

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