Academic Paper: Earthquake recovery versus routine maintenance

A design guideline for post-disaster repairs could ease the rebuild pain for asset owners.

This paper, written by Paul S. Botha and Eric Scheepbouwer, suggests that post-disaster repairs to horizontal infrastructure could be heavily influenced by design guidelines provided by asset owners.

All asset owners should maintain up-to-date asset registers and prepare guidelines in readiness for emergency situations.

Wastewater network damage would vary throughout a region, partly depending on the previous asset level of service. Repairs would logically bring assets back to the pre-disaster level, or remaining asset life. Therefore, asset owners need to know the state of their assets in order to prove the disaster damage.

A register baseline could discern between disaster-related faults and general network wear and tear.

Glossary terms:

• Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (SCIRT)
• Infrastructure Rebuild Management Office (IRMO)
• Infrastructure Recovery Technical Standards and Guidelines (IRTSG)

Tags:infrastructuredisaster recoverywastewater networkasset life