Characterisation of transport resilience and measures to enhance resilience in the recovery after the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake

Abstract

The Ward to Cheviot section of State Highway 1 is a key lifeline transport route that runs through the Kaikōura township. It is a strategically important link in the national state highway network, connecting the North Island via the Wellington-Picton ferry to the city of Christchurch in the South Island. Its strategic importance and vulnerable location between the mountainous Kaikōura range and the Pacific Ocean make it a critical transportation route in the national transport network. The route has been a focus for understanding the resilience of transport networks from as far back as 2000, when this section was used as a pilot study in early research into transport resilience. A further resilience assessment of this section was completed as part of a national state highway resilience study in mid-2016. Subsequently, the Mw 7.8 Kaikōura earthquake struck the northeast of the South Island on 14 November 2016, triggering thousands of large landslides and causing severe disruption to the transport network. The damage and disruption caused by the earthquake was comparable to that assessed in pre-earthquake studies of the resilience of the state highway. Landslides and embankment failures caused the most damage and disruption to the transport infrastructure, with the Main North Line railway closed for over 9 months and State Highway 1 closed for over a year. Post-earthquake landslides and debris flows triggered by storms caused additional damage and disruption during the recovery phase. Post-earthquake assessment of the corridor resilience was carried out to identify measures to enhance resilience as part of the recovery works. These measures included realigning the road and rail away from the steep hillsides, engineered works to reduce the potential for slope failure, and engineered works to reduce the potential for inundation of the corridor. The resilience assessments also enabled tactical and operational measures to be put in place to ensure safety while allowing the recovery operations to proceed in the context of enhanced risk associated with storm events and potential aftershocks.

Coastal earthquake-induced landslide susceptibility during the 2016 Mw 7.8 Kaikōura earthquake, New Zealand

“…Similar trends are observed for the distribution of landslides within younger sedimentary units (Table 3), and these findings are in line with field observations along the Kaikōura coast following the 2016 earthquake (e.g. Mason et al, 2017;Stringer et al, 2021). Thus, steeper coastal hillslopes are more prone to failure due to larger driving forces (i.e.…”

“…North of the Haumuri Bluffs, however, most coastal hillslopes are uplifted and buffered from direct wave action by shore platforms that have, in places, been anthropogenically modified to facilitate road and rail corridors (Fig. 2; Mason et al, 2017;Stringer et al, 2021). (Langridge et al, 2016) are in grey, and simplified major offshore structures are in blue.…”

Measuring and improving public space resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic: Chongqing-China as a case study

“…The emergency resilience of an access network is identified as the capability of the access network infrastructure to keep the functionality or minimize the effect after a disturbance. In addition, the system needs to be capable of bouncing back from setbacks or adjusting to new circumstances (Zhang et al, 2015;Aghababaei et al, 2021;Mason and Brabhaharan, 2021).…”

Earthquake contributions to coastal cliff retreat

“…While most coastal slopes in the Kaikōura region are both anthropogenically modified and buffered from direct wave action by low shore platforms and uplifted marine terraces (Mason et al, 2017;Stringer et al, 2021), the terraces and coastal cliffs at Conway Flat have had limited to no anthropogenic modification and are subject to direct wave action at high tide. A coarse sand and gravel beach stretches away from the cliffs at low tide.…”