Caroline Orchiston

Seismic risk scenario planning and sustainable tourism management: Christchurch and the Alpine Fault zone, South Island, New Zealand

This paper makes the case for natural disaster emergency planning to be incorporated into sustainable tourism strategies, using seismic risk scenario planning as a technique, and the Southern Alps of the South island of New Zealand as an example. The Alpine Fault is a 450-km-long geological structure running the length of the Southern Alps in New Zealand. Paleoseismic evidence suggests that a significant earthquake of magnitude (M) ∼ 7.8–8.0 is overdue. Coincident with this area of high seismic potential is a growing tourism industry, capitalising on the regions international reputation for nature-based tourism experiences. The scenario planning approach uses an isoseismal modelling methodology to describe a range of specific vulnerabilities in the tourism sector and highlight the physical outcomes and consequences for tourism-related infrastructure, transport, food supply, rescue, and survival likely to result from a future M8 earthquake on the Alpine Fault. Interviews with hazard management agencies investigated how tourism is considered in the context of current hazard management policies, and the urgent need to bring industry policies into partnership with other planning agencies and policies. Risk management is shown to be essential to address the triple bottom line of sustainable tourism management.

Tourism business preparedness, resilience and disaster planning in a region of high seismic risk: the case of the Southern Alps, New Zealand

This article examines tourism business disaster planning in areas at risk from low-frequency/high-consequence natural disasters. It presents empirical findings from a tourism business survey in the Southern Alps of New Zealand, an area with high seismic risk that supports a tourism industry comprising many micro-sized, owner-operated businesses. The Alpine Fault is a 450 km geological structure running the length of the Southern Alps, and is considered overdue for a M7.8–8.0 earthquake. A survey of tourism business operators revealed generally poor levels of perceived preparedness and actual planning for a future earthquake disaster, particularly amongst micro-sized businesses. The presence or absence of business resilience ‘tools’ was investigated, all of which are more common in businesses with higher incomes. The article draws on tourism disaster planning and business resilience literature to outline an alternative approach to disaster planning for small tourism-reliant communities. It describes community-based efforts to prepare in two remote Southern Alps townships, lending support to the concept of collective, community-led disaster planning.

Knowledge management and tourism recovery (de)marketing: the Christchurch earthquakes 2010–2011

New Zealand has a history of deadly earthquakes, the most recent of which in Christchurch (2010–2011) has had major consequences for the tourism sector. Tourism destinations affected by major natural disasters face significant challenges during the response and recovery phases. Christchurch lost a large proportion of its lifelines infrastructure and accommodation capacity, and experienced an unprecedented drop in domestic and international visitor arrivals. The theoretical frameworks informing this paper come from the fields of tourism disaster planning, knowledge management and recovery marketing. They inform an empirical study that draws upon qualitative expert interviews with national and regional destination management organizations regarding their experience of the Christchurch earthquakes. The findings of this research highlight the critical importance of knowledge management and effective inter-agency collaboration and communication in the immediate disaster response, as well as during the development and implementation of (de)marketing strategies, in order to expedite medium- to long-term tourism recovery.

Resilience and sustainability: a complementary relationship? Towards a practical conceptual model for the sustainability–resilience nexus in tourism

ABSTRACT “Sustainability” has endured as an important concept for tourism scholars, and volumes have been written about how to achieve this holy grail of the tourism industry. Sustainable tourism destinations are often promoted as the ethical choice for discerning travellers, with some marketers taking full advantage of the widely acknowledged ambiguities implicit in the term. More recently “resilience” has generated appeal in the academic tourism literature as a term that might capture core aspects of sustainability, while acknowledging the considerable influences that multiple contexts have on the capacity of communities to adapt and ultimately sustain their tourism enterprises. The resilience concept encompasses an inclusive and integrative “social ecological systems” approach which gives it a firm interdisciplinary underpinning in its application in tourism. While in a tourism context sustainability and resilience are kindred terms, relatively little scholarly effort has been committed to a critical treatment of these concepts. Addressing this deficiency, we present a conceptual model to discuss the relationship between sustainability and resilience in tourism. Drawing on examples from New Zealands nature-based tourism sector, this conceptual paper explores the insights that a critical treatment of the sustainability–resilience nexus might offer both academics and practitioners in the field of tourism studies.

Evaluation of coseismic landslide hazard on the proposed Haast-Hollyford Highway, South Island, New Zealand.

ABSTRACT Coseismic landsliding presents a major hazard to infrastructure in mountains during large earthquakes. This is particularly true for road networks, as historically coseismic landsliding has resulted in road losses larger than those due to ground shaking. Assessing the exposure of current and planned highway links to coseismic landsliding for future earthquake scenarios is therefore vital for disaster risk reduction. This study presents a method to evaluate the exposure of critical infrastructure to landsliding from scenario earthquakes from an underlying quantitative landslide hazard assessment. The method is applied to a proposed new highway link in South Island, New Zealand, for a scenario Alpine Fault earthquake and compared to the current network. Exposure (the likelihood of a network being affected by one or more landslides) is evaluated from a regional-scale coseismic landslide hazard model and assessed on a relative basis from 0 to 1. The results show that the proposed Haast-Hollyford Highway (HHH) would be highly exposed to coseismic landsliding with at least 30–40 km likely to be badly affected (the Simonin Pass route being the worse affected of the two routes). In the current South Island State Highway network, the HHH would be the link most exposed to landsliding and would increase the total network exposure by 50–70% despite increasing the total road length by just 3%. The present work is intended to provide an effective method to assess coseismic landslide hazard of infrastructure in mountains with seismic hazard, and potentially identify mitigation options and critical network segments.

Exploring disaster resilience within the hotel sector: A systematic review of literature

Abstract Within the tourism industry, the hotel sectors vulnerabilities are multi-faceted. This literature discussion scrutinizes how disaster and resilience is framed for the tourism sector, and, more specifically, how the concepts can be applied to the hotel sector. A synthesis of the literature points to the importance of prioritizing disaster resilience building for the hotel sector. The body of literature regarding disasters, tourism, and more specifically hotels, has increased over the last 20 years, still improvements in the hotel sectors disaster preparedness and do not appear to be on the same trajectory. Illustrating the predicament of the contemporary hotel industry serves to open a discussion about the value of building resiliency to disaster for hotels. As the numbers of people affected by disasters grows, the importance of providing actionable information to limit the severity of these events on communities also escalates in pace.

Near‐Real‐Time Modeling of Landslide Impacts to Inform Rapid Response: An Example from the 2016 Kaikōura, New Zealand, EarthquakeNear‐Real‐Time Modeling of Landslide Impacts to Inform Rapid Response

Reliable methods for the near‐real‐time modeling of landslide hazard and associated impacts that follow an earthquake are required to provide crucial information to guide emergency responses. After the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake in New Zealand, we undertook such a near‐real‐time modeling campaign in an attempt to pinpoint the location of landslides and identify the locations where roads and rivers had been blocked. The model combined an empirical analysis of landslide hazard (based on previously published global relationships) with a simple runout model (based on landslide reach angles). It was applied manually, with a first iteration completed within 24 hrs of the earthquake and a second iteration (based on updated shaking outputs) within ∼72  hrs . Both models highlighted the expectation that landsliding would be widespread and that impacts to roads likely meant that the township of Kaikoura was cut off from the surroundings. These results were used by responders at the time to formulate aerial reconnaissance flight paths and to identify the risk that landslide dams could cause further damage. Subsequent model verification based on available landslide inventories shows that although these models were able to capture a large percentage of landslides and landslide impacts, the outputs were overpredicted, limiting their use for pinpointing the precise locations of triggered landslides. To make future versions of the model more useful for informing emergency responses, continued work must be done on modification and adaptation of the approach so that this overprediction is minimized. Nevertheless, the results from this study show that the model is a promising initial attempt at near‐real‐time landslide modeling and that efforts to automate the approach would greatly increase the utility and speed of modeling in future earthquakes.

Project AF8: developing a coordinated, multi-agency response plan for a future great Alpine Fault earthquake

ABSTRACT The Alpine Fault is the most major source of seismic hazard in the South Island of New Zealand, with the potential to produce a magnitude 8+ earthquake and associated ground shaking and co-seismic hazards (e.g. landslides and liquefaction), and severe, widespread and long-term impacts throughout southern and central New Zealand. Scientific investigation of the hazard and risk posed by the Alpine Fault to New Zealand society over recent decades, and several recent large earthquake disasters in New Zealand (the 2010–2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence and the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake) have created considerable national, regional and local awareness and motivation to boost disaster risk management efforts for major earthquakes, further emphasising the importance of Project AF8’s objectives. In July 2016, a project to develop a collective South Island emergency response plan was initiated, in partnership with all South Island Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) groups and the Alpine Fault research community. This has become known as Project AF8 (Alpine Fault, magnitude 8). We describe the development and outcomes of the project, towards enhancing societal resilience to a future Alpine Fault earthquake.

Classical Temples and Industrial Stores: Survey Analysis of Historic Unreinforced Masonry (URM) Precincts to Inform Urban Seismic Risk Mitigation

ABSTRACT Oamaru, Winton, and Invercargill feature some of New Zealand’s most intact heritage precincts that are confronted by ongoing threats of seismic activity. The 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence and Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission of 2012, identified a nationwide trend through the proportion of deaths that occurred in public places as a result of the prevalent historic unreinforced masonry (URM) building stock. The reported study was undertaken to address urban safety and seismic risk mitigation through the lens of heritage conservation. The range of classically designed public buildings and industrial warehouses in the South Island of New Zealand were often produced by singular architectural practices, using locally sourced materials and construction techniques. It is vital to incorporate an examination of unique architectural qualities within urban seismic risk assessment and mitigation. Historic urban layout, architectural deployment of masonry, and extent of retrofits were recorded through onsite visual surveys via Geographical Information Systems and three-dimensional representation technologies. Extending the scope of information collected for engineering seismic risk assessment by focusing on the historical architectural context informs the selection of future mitigation measures. Oamaru, Winton, and Invercargill present intriguing case studies for multidisciplinary analysis, prior to testing urban-scale survey approaches within comparable historic centers across New Zealand.

Characterising rural resilience in Aotearoa-New Zealand: a systematic review

The concept of ‘resilience’ has recently gained traction in a range of contexts. Its various interpretations and framings are now used to examine a variety of issues, particularly relating to the human dimensions of global change. This can pose challenges to scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers seeking to develop focused research programmes, design targeted interventions, and communicate across disciplinary boundaries. The concept of resilience is widely used in Aotearoa-New Zealand, where it informs both government policy and research programmes. Resilience is particularly relevant in this small developed nation, which is heavily reliant on primary production in rural areas and affected by a range of geological and climatic hazards. To understand the range and extent of application of resilience in the rural context, we use systematic review methods to identify, characterise, and synthesise this knowledge base. Currently, research applying the concept of resilience in the rural context is limited in areal extent, largely quantitative in nature, and led by a small number of researchers. There is limited evidence of collaboration. Research has focused on a small number of hazards, failing to capture the diversity of risks and hazards in addition to their impacts. The results of our analysis and methodology offer important insights for meta-analyses of risk and hazard scholarship. The findings provide a baseline to track the future progress and effectiveness of resilience interventions and help inform current and future research priorities targeting persistent vulnerabilities in rural New Zealand and elsewhere.