Insights from our resilient buildings project
Over the past year, we’ve been working alongside the New Zealand Society of Earthquake Engineering, with funding from the Earthquake Commission, to understand societal expectations for the seismic performance of buildings.
In this series of posts, we explore some of our key findings in more depth to give some insight into what New Zealanders think about the performance of buildings in the event of an earthquake and the changes and decisions the country needs to make regarding our seismic engineering and building practices and the current regulatory regime.
How quickly do communities want different types of buildings to be available after an earthquake?
We explored this question with participants in our recent EQC-funded NZSEE Resilient Buildings Project.
Our current engineering standards focus on the structural response to an earthquake. For most buildings, there is little consideration of whether a building can function after a significant earthquake or how long it might take to recover if damaged. But this can have significant social and economic impacts, as experienced during the prolonged recovery from the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes.
Does this priority list look right to you?
