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Welcome

Dear colleagues and friends,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to Christchurch for the 2012 New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering (NZSEE) Annual Conference. The Society chose to hold this conference in Christchurch to provide an opportunity for you to witness first-hand the damage incurred to the region and its infrastructure.

There are challenges holding a convention of this scale in Christchurch at this time. We closed registrations at 400 delegates – 80 more than at the four-yearly Pacific Conference on Earthquake Engineering held in Auckland in April 2011.

With the two high profile keynote speakers speaking on very contemporary topics, a large number of high quality papers to be presented with oral and poster presentations, and the investigative tour around the earthquake affected city, I am sure that you will return home from the Conference with a sense of fulfillment.

I would also like to welcome you to our prestigious University, that until the last decade was home to the Legends of Earthquake Engineering: Park and Paulay. Our campus was also significantly affected by the recent earthquakes. The University’s emergency management planning was tested to the extreme, with distress for the students and staff as well as the more obvious physical damage to buildings and contents. Nevertheless, the University managed to deliver its regular academic programs with minimal compromise to the curricula; which in itself is a prime example of organisational preparedness and resilience.

I hope that you take the opportunity to look around our facilities, and talk to our staff and graduate students about the research they present during the course of the conference. Above all, I hope you are able to make the most of the opportunity to discuss issues that are of mutual interest and potentially beneficial to both Canterbury and the nation in the aftermath of recent series of earthquakes.

Associate Professor Rajesh Dhakal
Convener, NZSEE Annual Conference 2012

The NZSEE gratefully acknowledges significant contributions from the conference sponsors, particularly the sustained support by the principal sponsor, The Earthquake Commission: