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Kia ora koutou,
Welcome to the third of the RNC2 Urban Theme newsletters: a bi-yearly publication highlighting stories, publications, media, upcoming events and researcher profiles that are relevant to the Urban Theme.
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Urban Theme Leaders’ Updates
Tēnā koutou katoa,
We hope everyone is doing well and transitioning in good health through the winter season! We have a few updates that might be of interest to you. A new report from Koi Tū (The Centre for Informed Futures at the University of Auckland) has been published titled: ‘Uncertain but inevitable – the expert-policy-political nexus and high-impact risks’. The report exposes gaps in New Zealand’s risk management ecosystem and argues that countries need to rethink how they prepare for and manage high-impact risks. It also discusses risk assessment and perception, cognitive bias, and explores issues of accountability.
Another interesting report hot off the press has been published by Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga and is titled: ‘Te Pūtahitanga – a Tiriti led science to policy approach for Aotearoa New Zealand’. In Aotearoa, there has been concern about the exclusion of Māori and Pacific expertise from science advice and key decision-making roles. The report argues that Te Tiriti offers a powerful framework for connecting systems and communities of knowledge in ways that are mutually beneficial and future focused.
NEMA have published a post-event review of the 5 March 2021 Hikurangi Earthquake and Tsunami. The earthquake and tsunami sequence of 5 March were an unprecedented and extraordinary series of events resulting in New Zealand’s largest ever mass evacuation. The report focuses on NEMA’s response performance. The report captures aspects of the response that may be improved and aspects that worked well.
Finally, for those of you who were unable to make The National Emergency Management Conference 2021 - Hui Taumata o Te Uepū Whakahaere Haumaru in Wellington in late May, recordings of the presentations will soon be made available to watch online. To find out more follow this link.
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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, the keynote speaker at the The National Emergency Management Conference. She talked about her experiences and observations from leading New Zealand during crises, such as the Christchurch terrorist event, the Whakaari White Island eruption and the enduring COVID-19 pandemic.
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The 2020 Annual Urban Theme Research Wānanga
The 2nd Annual Urban Theme Research Wānanga was held on the 29th and 30th November 2020 on the Waipapa Marae at the University of Auckland City Campus. We welcomed over 40 participants from a wide range of organisations and disciplines related to risk, resilience and natural hazards research. Meetings like these play an important role in keeping everyone involved with the theme up to date on current research and recent findings, as well as allowing stakeholders to communicate their needs to the researchers.
Below is an overview of the talks given at the 2020 wānanga. Please get in touch with Jan Lindsay (J.Lindsay@auckland.ac.nz) if you are interested in any of the topics and would like to be put in contact with the researchers or to find out more.
Overview of Urban Theme PhD Projects (5 min talks)
Raj Prasanna for Chandrakumar Chanthujan (Massey) - Smart Cities: Building a Conceptualisation of Citizen-led Low-cost Early Warning Systems
SR Uma for Anna-Kay Spaulding Agbenyegah (GNS) - Post-Disaster Recovery from High Impact Weather Event in Auckland
Holly Faulkner (UC) - Governing Disaster Response in Aotearoa New Zealand – An Auckland Volcanic Field Case Study
Te Kerekere Roycroft (UoA) - Disasters, risk reduction and resilience for urban Māori |
| Liam Wotherspoon (UoA) - RNC Built Environment and aligned research programmes |
Urban Resilience Innovation and Collaboration Hub Projects (5 min talks)
Loic le De (AUT) - Good and Ready New Zealand
Tom Logan (UC) - Multi-criteria spatial optimisation for guiding long-term land use planning for resilience and sustainably
NIUPATCH Team - Talanoa Podcast: Educating and strengthening resilient communities in Manurewa |
| Amin Ghasemi (UoA) - Developing a near real-time impact framework for Wellington |
| Raj Prasanna (Massey) - Community-engaged low-cost sensors for earthquake early warning systems |
| Marion Tan (Massey) - The social side of warning systems: engaging communities, and outreach and education |
| Nilani Rangita, Sara Harrison, Yasir Sayed (Massey) - People, sensors, and data: Aligned PhD projects |
| Matthew St Martin (AUT) - Urban homelessness and resilience |
| Martin Joe (UoA) - Building for a better future: an opportunity for LEGO to facilitate emotional learning in disaster risk reduction |
| Trishna Patel (UoA) - Disaster risk reduction in New Zealand’s education curriculum |
| Erin Stieler (UoA) - Studying Abroad during a Pandemic: Challenges and Experiences of Resilience among International Students at the University of Auckland |
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Above: Te Kerekere Roycroft, Jan Lindsay, Lucy Kaiser, Josh Te Kani and Ben Simons outside the Wakapapa Marae. Below Left: Raj Prasanna speaking at the Research Wānanga. Below Right: The team on an evening walk sightseeing. Waving to David Johnston at the site of the first NZ parliament building.
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This year’s wānanga will be held in Wellington, with plans to host at the newly built and stunningly beautiful Te Rau Karamu Marae on Massey University’s Pukeahu Campus. Be sure to look out for announcements and calls for submissions later in the year (including in our next Newsletter). The provisional date for the wānanga is October-November 2021.
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Te Rau Karamu Marae on Massey University’s Pukeahu Campus.
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Profiles of our PhD students
We are proud to announce that we now have candidates for all of our flagship PhD projects. The projects represent the theme’s flagship research and are outlined below:
- Anna-Kay Spaulding Agbenyegah (Massey University) - Recovery futures: understanding and planning for recovery trajectories
- Chanthujan Chandrakumar (Massey University) - Smart Cities, Building a Conceptualisation of Citizen-led Low-cost Early Warning Systems
- Louise Baumann (University of Auckland) - Fostering Inclusion and Equity in Disaster Risk Reduction
- Te Kerekere Roycroft (University of Auckland) - Disasters, risk reduction and resilience for urban Māori
- Holly Faulkner - (University of Canterbury) - Governing Disaster Response in Aotearoa New Zealand – An Auckland Volcanic Field Case Study
In Newsletter #2 we profiled the PhD students from the Inclusive Workstream, Louise and Te Kerekere. Here we profile our remaining three students.
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Chandrakumar Chanthujan
Chanthujan is an electronics and telecommunication engineering graduate from the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka. He has a strong interest in the fields of the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning and artificial intelligence. Following the completion of his bachelor’s degree he joined Synopsys Lanka Pvt. Ltd. as an Application Engineer in 2018, and he currently serves as a Senior Application Engineer. After gaining some experience in the industry, Chanthujan began looking for opportunities where he could undertake research to solve real-life challenges while broadening his skills, knowledge and experiences.
Chanthujan began his PhD in Emergency Management at Massey University’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research in 2020. Chanthujan’s research is titled ‘Smart Cities, Building a Conceptualisation of Citizen-led Low-cost Early Warning Systems’. Currently, New Zealand’s primary earthquake warning generator is limited in that it can only disseminate post-earthquake information through the GeoNet website and mobile app. This means that there is no official earthquake early warning system available to give advanced warning to the New Zealand public. Chanthujan’s research will concentrate on developing citizen-led, self-aligning and self-healing IoT-embedded systems that foster low-cost earthquake early warning applications in New Zealand. In this work, he will be applying machine learning techniques to provide advanced warnings of earthquakes accurately, while ensuring that there are no bogus warnings issued. Chanthujan is working within the Smart Resilient Cities Workstream and is supervised by Drs Raj Prasanna and Max Stephens.
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Anna-Kay Spaulding Agbenyegah
Anna-kay is an outgoing nature lover, who loves to read religious books and has a great interest in travelling. She was born in St. Andrew, Jamaica, and was raised within a humble inner-city community in Kencot, Kingston, Jamaica. She studied a Bachelor of Arts in Geography at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica before moving to New Zealand to complete a Master of Disaster Management (first-class honours) at the University of Auckland.
Anna-kay is a PhD candidate in Disaster Management at Massey University’s School of Construction and the Built Environment. Her research is titled ‘Recovery futures: understanding and planning for recovery trajectories’. She will focus on post-disaster recovery from high-impact weather events in Auckland. Auckland’s geographic location and unique physical characteristics make the region susceptible to multiple hazards and high-weather related disaster events induced by climate change. These factors, coupled with the projected population increase in Auckland will proliferate the risk of disasters which may lead to loss of life and destruction of infrastructure and communities. Anna-Kay will use three or more of the most exposed communities in Auckland as case-studies, using existing vulnerability models to ascertain people’s exposure and their vulnerability to high-weather events, assessing community recovery timeframes and key factors that lead to resilience and recovery from disasters. He work involves developing a strategic, futuristic recovery and resilience plan and facilitating the creation of ground-rules for agencies to implement in their strategic recovery planning process. Anna-Kay is based at Massey University Auckland Campus, and is working within the Pathways to Urban Resilience Workstream. She is supervised by Prof Suzanne Wilkinson (Massey) and Drs SR Uma (GNS) and Julia Becker (Massey).
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Holly Faulkner
Holly recently completed a Master of International Law and Politics at the University of Canterbury. Since then she has been involved in several disaster law projects including a project mapping the disaster laws of Pacific nations (through the IFRC), and a project investigating the 2019 rescEU mechanism and its relationship to supranationalism (funded by QuakCoRE). Holly is also currently assisting Prof John Hopkins and Dr Toni Collins with their Regulation for Resilience project, alongside her work as a law intern with the Canterbury Community Law Centre.
Holly’s PhD is titled ‘Governing Disaster Response in Aotearoa New Zealand – An Auckland Volcanic Field Case Study’. The project is co-funded by the DEtermining VOlcanic Risk in Auckland (DEVORA) research programme. Holly will utilise volcanic eruption scenarios developed by DEVORA, assess the ability of the current structures to deal with an Auckland Volcanic Field eruption and consider how such structures could be further developed to increase their resilience. Holly is based at the University of Canterbury and is working within the Pathways to Urban Resilience Workstream. The project is supervised by Profs John Hopkins and Thomas Wilson.
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Post-graduate Student Successes
Erin Stieler
Erin Stieler at the University of Auckland has submitted her Masters’ thesis for examination. Her thesis, titled ‘Studying Abroad during a Pandemic: Challenges and Resilience amongst International Students in Aotearoa New Zealand during COVID-19’ focuses on the experience of University of Auckland international students studying abroad (in NZ) during 2020. Erin has also written a policy brief that highlights the key findings of her research. You can access the policy brief here.
Anthony Gampell
Anthony Gampell at the University of Auckland has successfully defended his PhD examination, titled ‘Beyond Stop Disaster 2.0: video games as tools to foster participation in learning about disasters and disaster risk reduction’.
Some of Anthony’s research into video games, disasters and participation can be found here:
- Anthony Viennaminovich Gampell, JC Gaillard, Meg Parsons & Karen Fisher (2017) Beyond Stop Disasters 2.0: an agenda for exploring the contribution of video games to learning about disasters, Environmental Hazards, 16:2, 180-191, DOI: 10.1080/17477891.2016.1275502
- Anthony Gampell, J. C. Gaillard, Meg Parsons & Loïc Le Dé (2020) ‘Serious’ Disaster Video Games: An Innovative Approach to Teaching and Learning about Disasters and Disaster Risk Reduction, Journal of Geography, 119:5, 159-170, DOI: 10.1080/00221341.2020.1795225
Congratulations to Erin and Dr Gampell!
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CRISiS Lab Tech Week and Early Earthquake Warning Outreach
The CRISiS Lab (Crisis Response and Integrated Simulation Science Laboratory) is a recently new research and learning laboratory based in the Joint Centre for Disaster Research (JCDR) at Massey University, Wellington. It provides a platform to conduct transdisciplinary socio-technical research at the human-technology interface. It provides a physical space as well as software and hardware resources for various research and learning activities.
Since the beginning of the year, CRISiS Lab has hosted a series of outreach events, webinar sessions, workshops and school engagements across the North Island of New Zealand.
On the 28th of May CRISiS Lab hosted a session during TechWeek 2021 - Smart Resilient Cities Showcase. The showcase featured face-to-face lightning talks and panel discussions. 10 researchers and PhD students with a wide variety interests in the field of disaster risk reduction shared their expertise. Topics ranged from community engagement, Kaupapa Māori, citizen science, structural engineering, digital technology, sensor monitoring, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, warning systems and communication of uncertainty in DRR.
CRISiS Lab also works to highlight their Early Earthquake Warning project (EEW). The EEW project explores the feasibility of developing a community engaged EEW system using low-cost instrumentation and devices that work through the countries’ existing communication infrastructures. You can find out more about the work that CRISiS Lab is doing, as well as information about their upcoming outreach events by visiting their website http://crisislab.org.nz/.
To view a recent EEW webinar hosted by CRISiS Lab, titled ‘Open Earthquake Early Warning: An open-source initiative to share and create a global community to develop better EEW systems’, with speakers Andres Meira and Václav Kuna follow this link.
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Urban Theme Researchers in the News
Dr Raj Prasanna appeared on Radio New Zealand’s Nine to Noon show to discuss community engaged earthquake early warning systems. Published 15 February 2021.
Raj also contributed an op-ed piece to The Dominion Post, titled ‘Citizen Scientists Could be the Key to Early Earthquake Warning System’. Published Feb 15 2021.
An Earthquake Early Warning project workshop conducted in Gisborne was featured in an article in the Gisborne Herald. The article discussed the EEW project as well as the event in Gisborne. Published 27 February 2021.
Dr Julia Becker wrote an op-ed piece to the Science Media Centre, titled ‘Three big earthquakes in one morning – Expert Reaction’. Published: 05 March 2021
Resilience Challenge PhD candidate Robert Cardwell (with Jan Lindsay) appeared in a NZ Herald article about new research modelling the social and economic fallout of a simulated volcanic eruption in Auckland including mass evacuations, reconstruction, and long-term changes in population and land use. Published: 16 May 2021.
Prof John Hopkins has appeared in the news, offering commentary over the case surrounding Whakaari/White Island.
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Dr Marion Tan in Gisborne with a low-cost ground motion sensor that could form part of an early earthquake warning system. Also pictured are Profs Tim Parkin and Anna Brown (Massey University).
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2nd Aotearoa New Zealand Symposium on Disaster Risk Reduction
The 2nd Aotearoa New Zealand Symposium on Disaster Risk Reduction will be held on 19-20 October 2021 at the Te Papa Tongarewa (Museum) in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington).
After a series of natural hazard disaster losses over the last decade, there is renewed impetus for disaster risk reduction initiatives to be higher on local and national agendas, and to see more science and evidence-based policy driving effective risk management.
The Symposium on Disaster Risk Reduction looks at some of the key mechanisms for managing risk including how we can tackle gaps and barriers and build on our strengths to create a safer, more resilient nation. The symposium will focus on participation, with the aim of using the collective expertise of the delegates to set out a plan to achieve what's missing in the short, medium, and long term.
To find out more and register, visit the website: https://www.resilience.nz/. Tickets are available now!
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Recent Publications
The following list details recent publications by our Urban Theme researchers related to resilience to natural hazards.
- Ghasemi, A., Stephens, M.T., and Elwood. K.J. (2021). Wellington Building Inventory: Rapid Earthquake Response Framework. Proceedings of the 2021 NZSEE Conference. April 14-16, Christchurch, New Zealand.
- Baumann L. (2021) Rooting out the evil: the stakes of addressing the structural and intersectional dimension of vulnerability in specific disaster laws. International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Geneva: https://disasterlaw.ifrc.org/media/1612?language_content_entity=en
- Cardwell R., McDonald G., Wotherspoon L., Lindsay J. (2021) Simulation of post volcanic eruption land use and economic recovery pathways over a period of 20 years in the Auckland region of New Zealand. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2021.107253
- Gampell A.V. (2021) Beyond Stop Disasters 2.0: video games as tools to foster participation in learning about disasters and disaster risk reduction. PhD thesis, The University of Auckland, Auckland.
- Huggins, T. J., Yang, L., Zhang, J., Tan, M. L., & Prasanna, R. (2021). Psychological Effects of Dominant Responses to Early Warning Alerts. International Journal of Ambient Computing and Intelligence (IJACI), 12(3), 1-15. http://doi.org/10.4018/IJACI.2021070101
- O’Connor, H., Hopkins, J., Johnston, D. (2021) Regulating for Resilience: Lessons from Wellington’s URM Building Order – New Zealand Law Journal.
- O’Connor, H., Hopkins, J., Johnston, D. (2021) For The Greater Good? Data and Disasters in a Post-COVID World. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 51:sup1, S214-S231, DOI: 10.1080/03036758.2021.1900297
- Gonzalez, R., Stephens, M.T., Toma, C.L., Elwood, K.J., Dowdell, D., (2021). 'Post-earthquake Demolition in Christchurch, New Zealand: A Case-Study Towards Incorporating Environmental Impacts in Demolition Decisions’ in Akkar et al. Advances in Assessment and Modelling of Earthquake Loss. Springer International Publishing. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-68813-4.
- Gonzalez, R., Stephens, M.T., Toma, C.L., Elwood, K.J., Dowdell, D. (2021). Quantifying the Embodied Carbon Cost from Demolitions Following the Canterbury Earthquakes. Proceedings of the 2021 NZSEE Conference. April 14-16, Christchurch, New Zealand.
- Shrestha, S., Orchiston, C., Elwood, K., Johnston, D., Becker, J. (2021). To cordon or not to cordon: The inherent complexities of post-earthquake cordoning learned from Christchurch and Wellington experiences. Bulletin of the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering, 54(1), 40-48.
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Next newsletter in October 2021
If you have stories and events to share in the next issue of this newsletter, please send them through to j.lindsay@auckland.ac.nz
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