Earthquake impact on utilities: planning for recovery

The first step towards improving a city's resilience is to understand the hazards it faces and assess their potential impact. The Wellington Lifelines Group in New Zealand is engaged in doing this exercise for the metropolitan area of the Wellington region, New Zealand. It consists of 20 utility operators and civil defence agencies that facilitate planning for major natural hazard events. This allows utility providers to understand the risks they face, mitigate them where practical with physical upgrades, and carry out emergency planning where services are likely to be seriously disrupted. This paper describes the work of the group and its 2012 report summarising the impact of a major earthquake on energy, transport, water and telecommunications utilities within metropolitan Wellington. The report outlined emergency planning projects in progress or proposed, thereby providing a snapshot of Wellington's current and projected preparedness to restart key services after a major disaster.