Seismic Risk Management in the New Zealand Context

摘要

The recent earthquakes in New Zealand have highlighted the vulnerability and risk to life safety of some of the existing building stock across the country. It is important for New Zealand to satisfactorily address risk to life safety from earthquakes within the social, heritage, and economic context in order to develop an appropriate response to address this issue. For many years, New Zealand has had legislation providing for nationwide seismic assessment of existing buildings and minimum seismic retrofit levels in buildings. While the legislation historically has worked successfully in conjunction with recommended practice promulgated by the New Zealand Society of Earthquake Engineering for the seismic assessment and retrofit of buildings experience from the Canterbury earthquake sequence and other recent earthquakes has led to the need to reconsider some aspects of both the legislation and the guidance provided for engineers assessing and retrofitting buildings. This review has led to the questioning of some aspects of previous practice. In this paper, the authors briefly discuss the history relating to earthquake risk buildings in New Zealand, the issues that have arisen as a result of the earthquakes and the manner in which these are likely to be addressed. The paper discusses approaches being used in New Zealand to identify and assess large numbers of buildings throughout New Zealand. The concept of relating existing building seismic resistance/performance to new building standards is explored illustrating how structural engineers are engaging with building owners, policy makers and the general public to communicate seismic risk.