Rural Organisational Impacts, Responses, and Recoveries to Natural Disasters: Case studies from the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence and the 2010 Southland Snowstorm

摘要

Natural disasters are increasingly disruptive events that affect livelihoods, organisations, and economiesworldwide. Research has identified the impacts and responses of organisations to different types ofnatural disasters, and have outlined factors, such as industry sector, that are important to organisationalvulnerability and resilience. One of the most costly types of natural disasters in recent years has beenearthquakes, and yet to date, the majority of studies have focussed on the effects of earthquakes in urbanareas, while rural organisational impact studies have primarily focused on the effects of meteorologicaland climatic driven hazards. As a result, the likely impacts of an earthquake on rural organisations in adeveloped context is unconstrained in the literature. In countries like New Zealand, which have majorearthquakes and agricultural sectors that are significant contributors to the economy, it is importantto know what impacts an earthquake event would have on the rural industries, and how these impactscompare to that of a more commonly analysed, high-frequency event.In September of 2010, rural organisations in Canterbury experienced the 4 September 2010 Mw 7.1`Darfield' earthquake and the associated aftershocks, which came to be known as the Canterbury earth-quake sequence. The earthquake sequence caused intense ground shaking, creating widespread criticalservice outages, structural and non-structural damage to built infrastructure, as well as ground surfacedamage from ooding, liquefaction and surface rupture. Concurrently on September 18 2010, ruralorganisations in Southland experienced an unseasonably late snowstorm and cold weather snap thatbrought prolonged sub-zero temperatures, high winds and freezing rain, damaging structures in the Cityof Invercargill and causing widespread livestock losses and production decreases across the region.This thesis documents the effects of the Canterbury earthquake sequence and Southland snowstormon farming and rural non-farming organisations, utilizing comparable methodologies to analyse ruralorganisational impacts, responses and recovery strategies to natural disasters. From the results, a short-term impact assessment methodology is developed for multiple disasters. Additionally, a regional assetrepair cost estimation model is proposed for farming organisations following a major earthquake event,and the use of social capital in rural organisational recovery strategies following natural disasters isanalysed.