[OSM-talk] Earthquake in Christchurch NZ last weekend

[Philip Shipley]

As a recent migrant to the UK to Christchurch I can say it was a
pretty scary experience and thank providence that it was at 4.35am and
not 4.35pm!!!

To characterise the damage as widespread is a little media spin -
there is some serious damage, especially to historical, brick
buildings in the centre and surrounding suburbs and I suppose it is
over a wide area, however I would estimate that 99.9% of the city is
fine.  What is interesting is that you can be on one street and
everything is normal , you turn the corner and it looks like a bomb
site for 100 metres then it is normal again.

Kaiapoi, a small town of 12,000 just north of Christchurch, has not
fared so well with over 400 homes condemned. Yet Woodend a few km's
further up the road is virtually untouched.

That I think has been the biggest surprise to the people I have spoken
to - the small pockets of carnage in an otherwise unscathed
environment.

I sure that many papers and thesis will be written on why this
phenomenon occurred as well as some serious re-evaluation on type of
soil/bedrock that it will be permissible to build on.  The event
bought to mind a childhood song "The Wise Man Built His House Upon the
Rocks".  Building on sand in a known earthquake zone was perhaps a
misjudgement.  The word of the week is liquefaction - there is a great
video here a 1964 that shows how the soil just turns to liquid, just
as it did in Kaiapoi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLZFlnND0hA

Anyway here is a great site that shows an time-line animation of the
quake and aftershocks

http://www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz/

There have been around 400 aftershocks so far, mostly unfelt, the
bigger ones are listed here

http://lists.geonet.org.nz/pipermail/eqnews/2010-September/

Phil

> Message: 9
> Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 16:53:01 +0900
> From: Andrew Errington <a.errington at lancaster.ac.uk>
> To: talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: [OSM-talk] Earthquake in Christchurch NZ last weekend
> Message-ID: <201009091653.02041.a.errington at lancaster.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="us-ascii"
>
> In case anyone missed reading about it, there was a 7.1 magnitude earthquake
> in Christchurch, New Zealand at the weekend.  Miraculously no-one was killed,
> despite widespread damage.  This was due mainly to the fact that it happened
> in the early morning, so people were asleep in their homes.  If they had been
> walking or driving through the city when it happened I am sure there would
> have been many injuries and deaths (and more news coverage).
>
> Anyway, a helpful individual has made this:
>
> http://www.mapquake.co.nz/
>
> And someone from ESRI (I think) in NZ has made this:
>
> http://s1.demos.eaglegis.co.nz/Flex/earthquake-christchurch
>
> I cannot find anything based on OSM, although I am not suggesting that someone
> should do this, since it seems that is already covered.  It's interesting,
> however, to see the UIs that are being used, and also how willing the general
> public is to contribute useful information to such a site.
>
> My questions are, is someone or some group using OSM as the data source for
> similar public information services?  Are there tools for people to make such
> webpages easily using OSM?  Is OSM ready for this?
>
> I apologise if this topic has been discussed in depth elsewhere.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Andrew
>
>