Looking to the Future for Seismic Design – Considerations to improve NZ resilience 

Didier Pettinga, Charlotte Toma, Max Stephens and Brabhaharan Pathmanathan 

We face multiple challenges in developing resilient buildings and infrastructure.  We are to design for earthquakes to enhance resilience while addressing decarbonisation to arrest climate change.  This in the context of facing the need to also design for increasing severe weather events, and under financial pressures exacerbated by the pandemic and other events.  These might first seem conflicting challenges . . . to increase strength and material use against decreasing material use to achieve decarbonisation.

These challenges force us to reflect on different and more holistic approaches to achieve resilience . . . functional built environments for society at lower carbon cost.  This presentation will explore through examples where this was possible in infrastructure and geotechnical engineering contexts, and some thoughts drawing inspiration from the past on how we can take this further as a society for our whole built environment.