Preparing for the next big quake

Information from past earthquakes can be used to prepare a more resilient society that will be better able to cope with future shakes.

University of Canterbury earthquake engineer Brendon Bradley says we can't predict when and where earthquakes will occur, but "we do have probabilistic models that tell us the likelihood that certain faults are going to rupture over a certain period of time."

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Brendon is the Director of QuakeCoRE - the New Zealand Centre for Earthquake Resilience. It is a Centre of Research Excellence that involves researchers from a wide range of organisations.

Brendon says resilience means "treating the entire earthquake pipeline from occurrence - how can we better understand where and when earthquakes occur - to the ground-shaking, the damage to buildings and other infrastructure, and then how society responds to that damage."

"Ultimately it's how we can reduce damage in the first place and how we can make society more resilient so that we can cope with the inevitable damage to a better degree."

Brendon has been in Christchurch for the past decade and he says his 'professional career has been shaped by the earthquakes", from the 2010 Darfield and 2011 Christchurch quakes to the 2016 Kaikōura quake.

As an earthquake engineer the quakes provided opportunities close to home to study the mechanisms and aftermath of large earthquakes.

"Large earthquakes don't happen very often and as researchers we always immediately try to get out into the field, because there's really no substitute for learning from observations."

There was significant ground-shaking in all three earthquakes, which happens to be Brendon's area of research.

It provided opportunities for "analysing the ground shaking and understanding how consistent that is with models we use to predict ground shaking for the future."

Brendon and colleagues produced a simulation of the ground-shaking that occurred during the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake. It has been intercut with footage recorded by CCTV in an office building in Wellington.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9c-Fwhaigc

While it is not possible to predict the timing and location of future earthquakes, QuakeCoRE researchers are involved in predicting future earthquake scenarios and their consequences…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details