Published works

The 1989 Newcastle Earthquake caused damage to 70,000 properties, with an associated total economic loss of AU$ 4 billion. Consistently, the insurance industry has estimated the economic risk posed by a moderate earthquake in any of the capital cities in Australia to be of the order of billions of dollars. A major reason for this risk is that Australia has not designed buildings for earthquake-induced forces until 1995 so that a large portion of our building stock is seismically vulnerable.

As demonstrated in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2010-11, a magnitude 6 earthquake can have a devastating impact on a city and country (damage rebuild estimated at ~ 20% national GDP!) even though buildings there have been designed for earthquakes for many decades.

This project includes collaborative research from 4 partner institutions to establish:

1. The relative vulnerabilities to earthquake shaking of the most common forms of building construction in Australia;
2. What earthquake retrofit techniques worked and what didn’t as a starting point in developing a ‘menu’ of economically feasible seismic retrofit techniques that could be used in Australian cities;
3. With industry end-user support, conduct proof of concept tests on some of the most promising seismic retrofit techniques on buildings scheduled for demolition by the SA state government;
4. Use the new damage and economic loss models developed over the first 3 years of this project to undertake a seismic risk assessment case study of the Melbourne metro area; and
5. Advance a series of end user focused research utilization projects in the areas of improved building regulation, community risk reduction, design profession guidance and insurance industry engagement with their policy holders. These will include an Earthquake Mitigation Case Study for the historic town of York in Western Australia and Development of a Rapid Visual Screening procedure for Australian buildings

Finally, using the new damage loss models and costings for seismically retrofitting buildings, make recommendations for the development of seismic retrofit guidelines and policy based on the strong evidence base developed.