RAPID: Learning From Earthquakes: Targeted Research Questions Emerging from the February 22, 2011 Christchurch Earthquake

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This Grant for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) award provides funding to send a small team of researchers to address several focused questions arising from the magnitude 6.3 earthquake which struck Christchurch, New Zealand, at 12:51 p.m. local time on February 22, 2011. This earthquake was an aftershock of the magnitude 7.1 September 3, 2010 (UTC) earthquake, but because of the time of day, the shallow depth of the earthquake and its closer proximity to the city the infrastructure damage, economic impacts and casualties are much greater than from the main shock of September 4, 2010. It is rare for a modern infrastructure inventory to be shaken by two strong and damaging earthquakes -- a major event followed by another at the same place within a six-month period. It is essential to explore this pair of events so that the research aspects of this rare concurrence will not be overlooked. The team will be tasked with addressing specific questions, and keeping an eye open to research opportunities not yet recognized, so that it can report back to the US research community in a timely fashion, thereby facilitating subsequent research as may be proposed by the US research community. In this project, three research themes have been identified as critical issues in need of immediate investigation before ephemeral data is compromised or lost. The focused reconnaissance themes that will be investigated are: Building collapse; Use of social media and risk communication; and Community resilience.This study has an explicit goal to broaden participation in the earthquake reconnaissance process as much as possible, engaging younger and underrepresented community members to participate on the team. In addition, this study addresses two of NSF?s broader goals: to promote US leadership in science and engineering, and to build longer-term international collaboration. The findings from the reconnaissance investigations will be shared widely with the broader research and practicing earthquake engineering community. The deliverables include contributions to a summary report that will be published in the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) newsletter, research summaries immediately posted on the web and shared with the community, a webcast briefing with Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley and the EERI/George E. Brown Network of Earthquake Engineering Simulation webinar on these research themes.