Research and Education

Under the Earthquake Commission Act 1993, one of EQC’s statutory functions is to “facilitate research and education about matters relevant to natural disaster damage, methods of reducing or preventing natural disaster damage.”  Funding for these functions comes from the Natural Disaster Fund administered by EQC.

EQC’s research and education work has made a substantial contribution to New Zealand’s understanding of the natural hazard landscape and how to mitigate natural disaster damage. A number of EQC-funded research projects made particular contributions to the recovery of Canterbury from the earthquake sequence, both at a homeowner and community level and also for New Zealand at a macro level.  Examples include GeoNet and the Canterbury ground improvement research programme.

Taken together, EQC’s research and public education programmes play an important role in identifying and managing natural disaster risk in New Zealand. Research, data and knowledge play a critical role in building resilience to mitigate the impact of natural disasters, and this is reflected in EQC’s Resilience Strategy. 

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