Christchurch has experienced a series of over 13,500 earthquakes between September 2010 and January 2012. Some children who have been exposed to earthquakes may experience post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms (PTSD) including difficulty concentrating, feeling anxious, restlessness and confusion. Other children may be resilient to the effects of disaster. Western models of resilience relate to a child’s social support and their capacity to cope. The Māori model of wellbeing relates to whanau (family), wairua (spiritual connections), tinana (the physical body) and hinengaro (the mind and emotions). Children’s concepts of helping, caring and learning may provide insight into resilience without introducing the topic of earthquakes into the conversation, which in itself may provoke an episode of stress. Many researchers have studied the effects of earthquakes on children. However, few studies have examined positive outcomes and resilience or listened to the children’s voices. The objective of this study was to listen to the voices of children who experienced the Canterbury earthquake period in order to gain a deeper understanding of the ideas associated resilience. Individual interviews were conducted with 17 five-year-old participants during their first term of primary school. After the interviews, the teacher shared demographic information and reports on the children’s stress and coping. Six children were identified as New Zealand European and eleven children identified as New Zealand Māori. Children had different views of helping, caring and learning. Themes of resilience from Western and Kaupapa Māori models were identified in transcripts of the children's voices and drawings. Māori children voiced more themes of resilience associated with the Western model, and in the Tapa Whā model, Māori children's transcripts were more likely to be inclusive of all four components of well-being. How five-year-old children, having experienced an earthquake disaster during their preschool years, talk or draw pictures about helping, caring and learning can provide insight into resilience, especially in situations where it is not advisable to re-traumatise children by discussing the disaster event. Future research should interview parents/caregivers and whānau to gain further insights. Considering information from both a Western and a Tapa Whā perspective can also provide new insights into resilience in young children. A limitation of this study is that qualitative studies are not always free from a researcher’s interpretation and are, therefore, subjective.

This thesis focuses attention on the ongoing effects of the earthquakes on children in Christchurch. It identifies the learning and behavioural difficulties evident in an increasing number of students and cautions the use of the word 'resilient' to describe children who may be just managing. This assumption has a significant impact on the wellbeing of many Christchurch children who, disaster literature warns, are likely to be under-served. This thesis suggests that, because of the scale of need, schools are the best place to introduce practices that will foster wellbeing. Mindfulness practices are identified as a potential tool for ameliorating the vulnerabilities experienced by children, while at the same time working to increase their capabilities. This thesis argues that, through mindful practices, children can learn to be more reflective of their emotions and respond in more considered ways to different situations. They can become more relational, having a greater understanding of others through a deeper understanding of themselves, and they can build resilience by developing the protective factors that promote more adaptive functioning. This thesis identifies the strong links between mindfulness and the holistic wellbeing concept of Te Whare Tapa Whã and a Mãori worldview. Strong links are also identified with the vision, values and key competencies of the New Zealand Curriculum and 21st Century learners. Both short and long term recommendations are made for the introduction of mindfulness practices in schools to enhance the wellbeing of children.

This report is the outcome of a case study conducted in Kathmandu, Nepal in April 2016. The purpose of the study is to investigate in the consequences of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, from the perspective of women within socioeconomically vulnerable groups. The caste system is still practiced nearly all over Nepal and women are still facing multiple forms of discrimination. A woman belonging to the Dalits, which is the group considered to be at the bottom of the hierarchy and below the castes, have no right to control land, housing or money and are exposed to violence and forced sexual labour. The aim of the study is to shed light over how already existing discrimination leads to further examples of discrimination in the aftermath of a natural disaster and the “class-consciousness” of natural disasters. People within a society are living under different conditions and these conditions lead to different consequences when facing a natural disaster. The components of these conditions are often intertwined with each other and should therefore not be examined separately, which is why an intersectional perspective is used for this study. Furthermore, standpoint theory is used as well, to look at these issues from the viewpoint of the marginalized people of the society. Interviews were made with 6 different respondents, who are working for NGOs in and outside of Kathmandu and who through their work are coming on contact with the issues mentioned. My findings show several examples of post-earthquake consequences for women which can be linked to the strong patriarchy, the use of caste system and mistreatment from the government.

abstract: Great disasters can often serve as birthing grounds for national transformation. As communities work to recover and rebuild, opportunities to reassess of prevailing development theories and programs may arise. As traditional development programs, supported by top-down development theories and billions in foreign aid, have not changed Haiti's impoverished status, such an opportunity has been presented to the Caribbean nation. Just a few months removed from the devastating 7.0 earthquake of Jan 12, 2010, this study identified the emergent thinking about development as expressed by key informants (N=21) from six entity types involved in Haiti's rebuilding efforts - government agencies, social ventures, grassroots, diaspora, foreign, and hybrid nonprofits. Findings were supplemented by participant observation of a civil society meeting in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Sustainable Livelihoods (SL) Framework was used as a lens with which to understand the causes of Haiti's social, institutional, environmental, and economic vulnerabilities. Modified grounded theory was used as the qualitative data analytical method from which five themes emerged: Haitian government, rebuilding, aid work and its effects, Haitian society, and international interference. Participants called for a refoundation, the building a nation from the ground up, of Haiti. Based on these findings, four transformative processes were identified as fundamental to Haiti's refoundation: 1) communication and collaboration with the Haitian government, 2) engagement of the Haitian people and the Haitian diaspora in the redevelopment work, 3) a broad vision of development for the nation, and 4) coordination and collaboration among NGOs. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Community Resources and Development 2010

Earthquakes can severely damage building structural and nonstructural systems and components, including active and passive fire protection and egress systems. If the occurrence of such damage is not anticipated at the design stage, the impact of a post-earthquake fire could be significant, as building and fire protection systems may not perform as expected. Unfortunately, even though both the seismic and fire engineering communities utilize performance-based approaches for designing well-performing and resilient buildings under earthquake and fire hazards respectively, each discipline carries out their associated building performance analyses independently. As a result, fire protection engineers have little guidance as to how to estimate structural and nonstructural building systems and component damage as inputs to help them develop post-earthquake building fire scenarios. To help bridge this gap, a conceptual framework is developed that illustrates how performance-based approaches for earthquake and fire engineering analysis and design can become more integrated for the development of post-earthquake fire scenarios. Using a fictional building in an earthquake prone area as an example, the conceptual framework is implemented to show (a) how earthquake-induced damage to building fire protection systems could be estimated using an earthquake performance assessment tool, (b) how the damage estimates might be translated into physical damage parameters in a way that is meaningful for developing post-earthquake building fire scenarios, (c) how the damage states might be implemented in terms of fire and egress modeling input parameters, and (d) how this information could be used to and compare post-earthquake building fire safety performance to a normal(undamaged) building fire conditions.

Recovery from disaster is a challenging period for any community. Long-term recovery is important, especially in relation to the built heritage, but it is among the least explored phases of disaster. Identifying past problems is needed to reduce future recovery complications. This study investigates the long-term recovery of public and Non-Government Organizations (NGO) owned historic buildings after an earthquake in the light of chosen sustainability variables. It examines San Francisco after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake as a case study and analyzes time needs, community participation, and maintenance of historic character, to identify whether historic buildings faced special issues and the variables involved. The study uses different methods. It statistically compares data for a sample of public and NGO owned buildings in San Francisco and then analyzes the dynamics of recovery for three buildings that faced delays. The study has found that historic buildings faced delays in recovery but such delays were sometimes the results of major rehabilitation projects, thus having long-term benefits. There are many variables in the recovery process that delay historic buildings and can be addressed to reduce future delays, which are mostly results of the context, process, and players. Time needs for the recovery of buildings are affected by their function, damage level, and status. Also, the sustainability of the process needs to be addressed, mainly in terms of the way historic buildings are valued, and the degree to which such valuation allows them to be part of the heritage of the community at large.

Recovery from disaster is a challenging period for any community. Long-term recovery is important, especially in relation to the built heritage, but it is among the least explored phases of disaster. Identifying past problems is needed to reduce future recovery complications. This study investigates the long-term recovery of public and Non-Government Organizations (NGO) owned historic buildings after an earthquake in the light of chosen sustainability variables. It examines San Francisco after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake as a case study and analyzes time needs, community participation, and maintenance of historic character, to identify whether historic buildings faced special issues and the variables involved. The study uses different methods. It statistically compares data for a sample of public and NGO owned buildings in San Francisco and then analyzes the dynamics of recovery for three buildings that faced delays. The study has found that historic buildings faced delays in recovery but such delays were sometimes the results of major rehabilitation projects, thus having long-term benefits. There are many variables in the recovery process that delay historic buildings and can be addressed to reduce future delays, which are mostly results of the context, process, and players. Time needs for the recovery of buildings are affected by their function, damage level, and status. Also, the sustainability of the process needs to be addressed, mainly in terms of the way historic buildings are valued, and the degree to which such valuation allows them to be part of the heritage of the community at large.

This dissertation develops a new concept for performance-based monitoring (PBM) of instrumented buildings subjected to earthquakes. This concept is achieved by simultaneously combining and advancing existing knowledge from structural mechanics, signal processing, and performance-based earthquake engineering paradigms. The PBM concept consists of 1) optimal sensor placement, 2) dynamic response reconstruction, 3) damage estimation, and 4) loss analysis. Within the proposed concept, the main theoretical contribution is the derivation of a nonlinear model-based observer (NMBO) for state estimation in nonlinear structural systems. The NMBO employs an efficient iterative algorithm to combine a nonlinear model and limited noise-contaminated response measurements to estimate the complete nonlinear dynamic response of the structural system of interest, in the particular case of this research, a building subject to an earthquake. The main advantage of the proposed observer over existing nonlinear recursive state estimators is that it is specifically designed to be physically realizable as a nonlinear structural model. This results in many desirable properties, such as improved stability and efficiency. Additionally, a practical methodology is presented to implement the proposed PBM concept in the case of instrumented steel, wood-frame, and reinforced concrete buildings as the three main types of structural systems used for construction in the United States. The proposed methodology is validated using three case studies of experimental and real-world large-scale instrumented buildings. The first case study is an extensively instrumented six-story wood frame building tested in a series of full-scale seismic tests in the final phase of the NEESWood project at the E-Defense facility in Japan. The second case study is a 6-story steel moment resisting frame building located in Burbank, CA, and uses the recorded acceleration data from the 1991 Sierra Madre and 1994 Northridge earthquakes. The third case is a seven-story reinforced concrete structure in Van Nuys, CA, which was severely damaged during the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The results presented in this dissertation constitute the most accurate and the highest resolution seismic response and damage measure estimates obtained for instrumented buildings. The proposed PBM concept will help structural engineers make more informed and swift decisions regarding post-earthquake assessment of critical instrumented building structures, thus improving earthquake resiliency of seismic-prone communities.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第24900号 / 工博第5180号 / 新制||工||1989(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院工学研究科建築学専攻 / (主査)教授 西山 峰広, 教授 池田 芳樹, 教授 山本 貴士 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Philosophy (Engineering) / Kyoto University / DFAM

An automated method in damage state assessment of reinforced concrete columns for the purpose of establishing a rapid and quantitative post-earthquake safety and structural evaluation procedure is proposed. Several techniques from the fields of computer vision and image processing are employed in order to develop a set of methods capable of automatically detecting spalled regions on the surface of reinforced concrete columns as well as the properties of cracks and spalled regions on these surfaces. The resulting properties of the observed visible damage on the reinforced concrete column surfaces are then utilized to automatically estimate the existing condition and safety of the column. The damage state is quantified according to the maximum drift capacity of the column. The methods proposed in this research were implemented in a Microsoft Visual Studio .NET environment, and tested on real images of damaged columns. The test results indicated that the methods could automatically detect spalled regions and retrieve the properties of spalling and cracks on reinforced concrete column surfaces in images or video frames, and further, that this retrieved information could be accurately translate to a meaningful assessment of the column's existing damage state in the form of the maximum drift capacity.