Seismic Hazard of the Southern South Island: the Neglected Provinces

this URP  had the goals of: (1) understanding the location and activity of earthquake sources in low seismicity regions located away from the plate boundary of New Zealand; and (2) assessing the current understanding of earthquake resilience legislation by key stakeholders, and the progress being made to improve preparedness and reduce risk in these regions. Southland was chosen as the focus for the study, as it is one of New Zealand’s low seismicity regions, and one that has received minimal focus in previous years in comparison to the attention given to the more active plate boundary areas. We took this as an opportunity to work in an area of the country that has had limited attention, and sought to establish whether the region’s low hazard in the 2012 national seismic hazard model was due to the lack of knowledge of earthquake sources, or because of a real absence of sources. Our activities and achievements over the course of this URP have occurred across the topic areas of earthquake source identification, and earthquake resilience.

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