Funder:
LEAD Researchers:
Marozane Spamers and Jayson Ware
Project Desription:
The project will investigate the intersection of prisons, human rights, and disaster risk in Australasia. The project aims to highlight how environmental risks—such as rising water tables, coastal inundation, and extreme heat events—pose significant threats to the safety, health, and dignity of people in detention. Drawing on international human rights frameworks such as the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT), as well as relevant domestic legislation, this project will critically examine the regulatory landscape and its capacity to protect prison communities from disaster-related harms. Analysis of Inspectorate and oversight reports will further illuminate systemic gaps and opportunities for reform, underscoring the urgent need to integrate disaster risk reduction into prison management and human rights oversight.
Funder:
Fonds Pacifique - the Pacific Fund of the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs
Lead Researchers:
Annick Masselot
Funder:
LEAD Researchers:
James Meaghan and Laura Johnstone
Project Desription:
The project considers how the New Zealand Police responded to, and learned from, the 2010/2011 Canterbury Earthquake sequence. It considers the immediate emergency response to the disaster and the short and medium term recovery arising from the earthquake sequence. This aim is to inform the long-term planning that goes into ensuring policing can improve for future disasters, including both seismic events and other “natural” hazards. This is particularly relevant given the increasingly vulnerability of Aotearoa New Zealand in the face of climate change.
Funder:
LEAD Researcher:
Toni Collins
Project Description:
This project will examine dispute resolution in the wake of Canterbury earthquakes to ascertain both best practice and problematic systemic issues. Anecdotal evidence from practitioners, government reports and small-scale research (as well as media reports) suggests a fundamental inability of dispute resolution mechanisms in Aotearoa New Zealand to cope in times of disaster. Similar experiences have been seen in the wake of the COVID response. This relates to lack of resilience in the dispute resolution models adopted leading to a reactionary response which led to multiple and varied approaches. This relates particularly to the issue of residential disputes and the impacts they have on mental health and long-term recovery (linking with projects planned with IP3).
This project will look at the dispute resolution sector as a whole, including Courts, Tribunals and bespoke entities established to address particular sectors (e.g., Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunals) as well as equivalent overseas models to understand the challenges and their potential resolution in post-earthquake (and other) disaster situations. The conclusion will provide policy recommendations for improving post-earthquake resilience in the sector as well as reducing the need for dispute resolution by improve mechanisms for channelling expectations.
Funder:
QuakeCoRE (Strategic Fund)
Lead Researchers:
Annick Masselot, Roxy Matheson (student)
Project Description:
Gender-based violence law in the midst of earthquakes.
Funder:
QuakeCoRE (Strategic Funding)
Lead Researchers:
Annick Masselot, Toni Collins, Beatrice (Bea) Holman (PhD student)
Project Description:
Bea is conducting a PhD scholarship relating to women’s employment and disasters.
Completed Projects
Funder:
QuakeCoRE (DT3)
Lead Researchers:
John Hopkins, Natalie Baird and Annick Masselot
Funder:
Lead Researchers:
Annick Masselot, Silke Clausing (Research associate)
Project description:
This project is concerned with the impact of earthquakes and other natural disasters on family relationships/individual vulnerability within a family and their legal protection in three comparable jurisdictions in the Pacific region. It will focus on two critical aspects impacting parents and families during and following disasters: Firstly, the extent to which the legal framework and policies take into account parental caregiving responsibilities, and secondly, their alignment with international experience which indicates an increase in family violence following disasters. As both areas disproportionally affect women, the project will be underpinned by gender perspectives.
Funders:
- National Science Challenges (NSC): Resilience to Nature’s Challenges
- Urban Theme
- Determining Volcanic Risk in Auckland (DEVORA)
Lead Researchers:
John Hopkins and Thomas Wilson
Project Description:
Building upon existing work in the field, this project examines the resilience of New Zealand’s legal and constitutional framework in the wake an Auckland Volcanic Field Eruption. The project utilises scenarios developed by the DEVORA research programme to assess the ability of the current structures to deal with such an event and considers how such structures could be further developed to increase their resilience. Working alongside DEVORA stakeholders (including Auckland Council), the project aims to provide not only a better understanding of the specific issue of volcanic risk to the legal framework (and thus effective response and recovery) but more generally expand our knowledge of disaster law and governance in a New Zealand context. Holly Faulkner completed the project as part of a funded PhD scholarship, producing the thesis Ready or Not? Legal Preparedness for an Auckland Volcanic Field Eruption.
Lead Researcher:
Natalie Baird
UC UPC Submission Group:
Erin Gough, Andrew Pullar, Christy Pullyn, Jennifer Sangaroonthong, Sara Tan and Joy Twemlow (LLB Students)
Year:
2013
Project Description:
Submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Human Rights Impacts of the Earthquakes.
Funder:
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)
Lead Researchers:
John Hopkins, Finau Leveni, Leticia Smith and Holly Faulkner
Project Description:
Pacific Island Countries are extremely vulnerable to climate change and natural hazards; the region hosts five of the ten most at-risk countries in the world. As such, it is critical that domestic laws and policies provide clear rules of the road to guide national and international humanitarian efforts. The project examined the legal preparedness for international disaster assistance across the 16 English-speaking member states of the Pacific islands Forum and provides an assessment of domestic disaster risk management arrangements against the ‘Guidelines for the domestic facilitation and regulation of international disaster relief and initial recovery assistance’ (IDRL guidelines) as promulgated by the IFRC and accepted by all UN member states as the key measurement in its assessment. The complete work is freely available online via the IFRC Asia-Pacific website.
Funder:
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)
Lead Researchers:
John Hopkins, Finau Leveni, Leticia Smith and Holly Faulkner
Project Description:
Pacific Island Countries are extremely vulnerable to climate change and natural hazards; the region hosts five of the ten most at-risk countries in the world. As such, it is critical that domestic laws and policies provide clear rules of the road to guide national and international humanitarian efforts. The project examined the legal preparedness for international disaster assistance across the 16 English-speaking member states of the Pacific islands Forum and provides an assessment of domestic disaster risk management arrangements against the ‘Guidelines for the domestic facilitation and regulation of international disaster relief and initial recovery assistance’ (IDRL guidelines) as promulgated by the IFRC and accepted by all UN member states as the key measurement in its assessment. The complete work is freely available online via the IFRC Asia-Pacific website.
Funder:
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)
Lead Researchers:
John Hopkins, Finau Leveni, Leticia Smith and Holly Faulkner
Project Description:
Pacific Island Countries are extremely vulnerable to climate change and natural hazards; the region hosts five of the ten most at-risk countries in the world. As such, it is critical that domestic laws and policies provide clear rules of the road to guide national and international humanitarian efforts. The project examined the legal preparedness for international disaster assistance across the 16 English-speaking member states of the Pacific islands Forum and provides an assessment of domestic disaster risk management arrangements against the ‘Guidelines for the domestic facilitation and regulation of international disaster relief and initial recovery assistance’ (IDRL guidelines) as promulgated by the IFRC and accepted by all UN member states as the key measurement in its assessment. The complete work is freely available online via the IFRC Asia-Pacific website.
Funder:
Santander Fellowship
Lead Researchers:
Annick Masselot (in collaboration with Roberta Gurrina, University of Surrey, UK)
Year:
2016 - 2017
Funder:
Jean Monnet Programme, European Commission
Lead Researchers:
Annick Masselot, G. Taylor and Dr. K Vadura
Awarded the 2014 RISK Award for the best project proposal for disaster prevention in 2014 by the Global Risk Forum, Davos, UN International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (ISDR) and the Munich Re Foundation from Knowledge to Action.
Funders:
Earthquake Commission (ECQ) Biennial Research Funding Programme
Lead Researcher: Toni Collins (in collaboration with Resilient Organisations)
Project Description:
Organisations have a number of regulatory obligations to protect their employees and other stakeholders, such as those in the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA). The HSWA has a core purpose to “protect workers and other persons against harm to their health, safety, and welfare by eliminating or minimising risks arising from work….”. On the surface, the legislation is well placed to promote seismic risk reduction activities, however we currently have little understanding of how organisations interpret and act on obligations within the HSWA to reduce seismic risk. Understanding the obligations imposed by current legislation, as well as how legislation is interpreted and acted upon by organisations, will help us to determine:
- The potential impact of legislation influencing disaster risk reduction behaviours; and
- How legislative levers could be better utilised to encourage preparedness and reduce economic loss and injury following natural hazard events.
Read the final report here.
- Eve Boister "Legal Options for the Resolution of Abandoned Buildings and Sites Post-Christchurch Earthquake" (2021)
Joint Projects with the Urban Resilience Cluster (CuRE):
- Alise Winter "Exploring the Role of insurance in Climate Change Adaption" (2021)
- Tylan Collins "Estimating the Threat of Sea Level Rise to people Over the Next 100 Years" (2021)
- Sam Paquier "Reviewing and Building on Existing Approaches for Climate Change Adaption Planning" (2021)
Funders:
QuakeCoRE Strategic Project Fund
Lead Researcher:
Natalie Baird
Date:
2018 - 2020
Project Description:
The project examined two preliminary Canterbury-based case studies of Human Rights in the context of disaster:
- “Disasters, Human Rights and Vulnerability: Reflections from the Experiences of Older Persons in Post-Quake Canterbury”;
- “Remedies for Human Rights Violations in Post-Quake Canterbury: the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises”
Funder:
QuakeCoRE (Flagship 3)
Lead Researchers:
John Hopkins, Toni Collins, Cameron Eade and Holly Faulkner
Project Description:
The project provides an assessment of the current regulatory environment and the level of building stock resilience the system is likely to deliver, with a focus on multi-storey, multi-occupancy buildings in the Wellington CBD. The project aims to other aspects of QuakeCoRE’s research programmes to provide an overall regulatory map. On the basis of this, the Wellington Case Study project will incorporate comparative understandings from overseas examples, particularly focussing on intensively developed CBDs with similar regulatory models with a view to providing future directions for seismic regulation.
Funder:
UC School of Law Research Fund
Lead Researchers:
Elizabeth Toomey and Toni Collins, in collaboration with Emily Walton (Wynn Williams)
