Vision
The damage and disruption caused by future earthquakes in Aotearoa New Zealand is minimised by robust building techniques and design standards.
Project description
The Canterbury earthquakes demonstrated that building design standards in Aotearoa New Zealand effectively limit the risk of loss-of-life during earthquake events. However, there was significant damage to buildings and significant and lengthy disruption for Canterbury communities. Changes to our building design standards are needed to reduce this damage and disruption, and enable communities to recover rapidly.
We aim to better understand the mechanics and fragility of various building types and identify changes to design codes that will reduce damage and disruption caused by earthquakes.
To do this, we are conducting a broad benchmarking study to clearly define the likely seismic performance of various building types in different parts of Aotearoa New Zealand. Using the insights from the benchmarking study, we are supporting two main research objectives.
Firstly, we are identifying ways to quantify and mitigate the risk of monetary losses due to earthquakes considering different design solutions and building technologies. To achieve this, we are:
Secondly, we are helping to develop building design and assessment standards to mitigate losses from future earthquakes, and identifying ways to account for the cascading effects on buildings of earthquakes and tsunami.
Our goal is to make Aotearoa New Zealand more resilient by identifying effective ways of reducing the damage to buildings and disruption caused by future earthquakes.
An overview of our research to build resilience across New Zealand's vertical infrastructure (buildings) and horizontal infrastructure (utility networks).
Presentation slides from the 'Resilience of Aotearoa New Zealand's Built Environment' webinar, December 2022. Prepared by Assoc Prof Liam Wotherspoon and Prof Tim Sullivan.
L. John, M.B. Williamson & T.J. Sullivan. Investigating the impact of design criteria on the expected seismic losses of an office building. Proceedings of the…
Sarkis , Ana Isabel; Sullivan, Timothy. Finite Element Analyses of Hollow Core Units Subjected to Shear and Torsion. Proceedings of the 2021 New Zealand Society…
Bhanu, Vishvendra; Chandramohan, Reagan; Sullivan, Timothy. Incorporating the influence of duration on dynamic deformation capacity in seismic assessment. Proceedings of the 2021 New Zealand Society…
Haymes, Kieran; Sullivan, Timothy; Chandramohan, Reagan. Strength requirements for non-structural components responding nonlinearly under earthquake excitation. Proceedings of the 2021 New Zealand Society for Earthquake…
Williamson, Michael; John, Luis; Sullivan, Timothy. Investigating the impact of design criteria on the expected seismic losses of an office building. Proceedings of the 2021…
Gribbon, Cameron; Jennings, Zayne; De Francesco, Giovanni; Sullivan, Timothy. Seismic Design and Analysis of a Medium Density Residential Building. Proceedings of the 2021 New Zealand…
Gonzalez, R.E., Stephens, M.T., Toma, C., Elwood, K.J., Dowdell, D. (2021). Post-earthquake Demolition in Christchurch, New Zealand: A Case-Study Towards Incorporating Environmental Impacts in Demolition…
Ghasemi, Amin; Stephens, Max; Elwood, Ken. Wellington Building Inventory: Rapid Earthquake Response Framework. Proceedings of the 2021 New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering Annual Technical…
Sullivan T. 2020. New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering. In. Proceedings of the 2020 New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering Annual Technical Conference. 2020 Apr…
Sullivan TJ. 2020. Post-earthquake reparability of buildings: the role of non-structural elements. Structural Engineering International. 30(2):217-223. doi:10.1080/10168664.2020.1724525.
Millen MDL, Pampanin S, Cubrinovski M. 2021. An integrated performance-based design framework for building-foundation systems. Earthquake Engineering & Structural Dynamics. 50(3):718-735. doi:10.1002/eqe.3354.
Haymes K, Sullivan T, Chandramohan R. 2020. A practice-oriented method for estimating elastic floor response spectra. Bulletin of the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering.…
O’Reilly GJ, Monteiro R, Nafeh AMB, Sullivan TJ, Calvi GM. 2020. Displacement-based framework for simplified seismic loss assessment. Journal of Earthquake Engineering. 24(sup1):1-22. doi:10.1080/13632469.2020.1730272.
Arifin F, Sullivan T, Dhakal R. 2020. Experimental investigation into the seismic fragility of a commercial glazing system. Bulletin of the New Zealand Society for…
Cubrinovski M, Bradley BA, Elwood KJ, Johnston D, Orchiston C, Sullivan T, Wotherspoon LM. 2020. Wellington’s earthquake resilience: lessons from the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake. Earthquake…
Puranam A, Filippova O, Pastor-Paz J, Stephens M, Elwood KJ, Ismail N, Noy I, Opabola E. 2019. A detailed inventory of medium-to high-rise buildings in…