Resilience to Nature's Challenges

Resilience to Nature's Challenges
Resilience to Nature's Challenges National Science Challenge
Established2015
TypeResearch programme
Location
  • New Zealand
Director
Richard Smith
Budget$59.4 m NZD
FundingMBIE
Websiteresiliencechallenge.nz

Resilience to Nature's Challenges (Māori: Kia manawaroa – Ngā Ākina o Te Ao Tūroa) was one of New Zealand's eleven collaborative research programmes known as National Science Challenges. Running from 2015 to 2024, the focus of Resilience to Nature's Challenges (RNC) research was enhancing New Zealand's resilience to natural hazards such as sea level rise, climate change, wildfire, and volcanoes.

Establishment and governance

The New Zealand Government agreed in August 2012 to fund National Science Challenges: large multi-year collaborative research programmes that would address important issues in New Zealand's future. The funding criteria were set out in January 2014, with proposals assessed by a Science Board within the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE).[1]

Official launch of Resilience to Nature's Challenges in March 2015; Science and Innovation Minister Steven Joyce centre

After a planning phase in 2014, MBIE approved the Crown Research Institute GNS Science as a host for the project. RNC was launched in March 2015 by Minister for Science and Innovation Steven Joyce, with interim Director Shane Cronin. The Māori name of Resilience to Nature's Challenges translates as Kia manawaroa (resilience) Ngā āki (-na) (challenges) [o Te] Ao Tūroa (of the enduring world).[2]

RNC was hosted by GNS Science, with twelve other New Zealand research partners: BRANZ, Opus International, Resilient Organisations Ltd, Market Economics Ltd, the University of Auckland, University of Canterbury, University of Otago, Massey University, Lincoln University, Victoria University of Wellington, Scion, and NIWA.[3] The Challenge involved 90 researchers and had an initial four-year allocation of $19.6 million.[3]

RNC was set up around two major themes: Understanding Hazard and Risk (with research programmes on coastal hazards, volcanoes, weather and wildfires, and earthquakes and tsunamis), and Accelerating Resilience (incorporating research on both rural and urban communities, built environments, and Whanake te Kura i Tawhiti Nui—applying traditional Māori knowledge to hazard resilience).

In December 2018 the structure was adjusted, adding two research models (Multihazard Risk and Resilience in Practice) to the research programmes Rural, Urban, Māori, Built, Coastal, Weather, Earthquake/Tsunami and Volcanism, under the Understanding Risk and Accelerating Resilience themes.[4]

Research

Resilience to Nature's Challenges Governance Group and science leaders hui, July 2021

One event that shaped RNC's research programme was the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake, which severed critical infrastructure in Marlborough and isolated the town of Kaikōura and forced scientists to examine how they should adjust their research efforts following a natural disaster.[5] Researchers studied the impact of the earthquake on three waters systems,[6] on the South Island's road network,[7] on the Kaikōura community and its subsequent recovery,[8][9] and the implications for Wellington's earthquake resilience.[10]

The Earthquakes and Tsunamis programme developed New Zealand's first earthquake cycle simulator, generating a catalogue of ruptures going back hundreds of thousands of years on all of the country's major faults. The computer model generated clusters of large seismic events, and revealed ways that the rupture of a deep fault can trigger earthquakes on shallow faults.[11]

Symposia

In May 2021 RNC co-organised the symposium Growing Kai under Increasing Dry at Te Papa with the Our Land and Water and Deep South science challenges, to examine the long-term changes need in New Zealand farming practice to cope with climate change.[12]

In June 2024 RNC organised a final symposium, Te Tai Whanake, at Te Papa to celebrate ten years of research from the science challenge.[13]

References

  1. ↑ "Criteria for Proposals for National Science Challenges funding – 2014-go548". New Zealand Gazette. 31 January 2014. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
  2. ↑ MBIE. "Resilience to Nature's challenges | Kia manawaroa – Ngā Ākina o Te Ao Tūroa". National Science Challenges. Retrieved 29 August 2024.
  3. 1 2 "Resilience Challenge gets the green light". Resilience to Nature's Challenges National Science Challenge. 4 March 2015. Retrieved 29 August 2024.
  4. ↑ "Phase two science leads appointed". Resilience to Nature's Challenges. 20 December 2018. Retrieved 29 August 2024.
  5. ↑ Lane, Emily M.; Thomas, Kristie-Lee; Schoenfeld, Marion R.; Wilson, Thomas M.; Hughes, Matthew W. (1 August 2020). "The scientific response to the 14 November 2016 Kaikōura tsunami – Lessons learnt from a moderate event". International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. 47 101636. doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101636. ISSN 2212-4209.
  6. ↑ Hughes, Matthew W.; Nayyerloo, Mostafa; Bellagamba, Xavier; Morris, Jonathan; Brabhaharan, Pathmanathan; Rooney, Stephen; Hobbs, Erica; Woolley, Keith; Hutchison, Steve (30 June 2017). "Impacts of the 14th November 2016 Kaikōura earthquake on three waters systems in Wellington, Marlborough and Kaikōura, New Zealand". Bulletin of the New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering. 50 (2): 306–317. doi:10.5459/bnzsee.50.2.306-317. ISSN 2324-1543.
  7. ↑ Aghababaei, Mohammad T.; Costello, Seosamh B.; Ranjitkar, Prakash (2020). "Assessing operational performance of New Zealand's South Island road network after the 2016 Kaikoura Earthquake". International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. 47 101553. doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101553.
  8. ↑ Cradock-Henry, Nicholas A.; Buelow, Franca; Fountain, Joanna (2019). "Social–ecological inventory in a postdisaster context: the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake, Aotearoa-New Zealand". Ecology and Society. 24 (3). doi:10.5751/ES-11075-240309. hdl:10182/10916. ISSN 1708-3087.
  9. ↑ Fountain, Joanna; Cradock-Henry, Nicholas A. (3 April 2023). "We're all in this together? Community resilience and recovery in Kaikōura following the 2016 Kaikōura-Hurunui earthquake". New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics. 66 (2): 162–176. doi:10.1080/00288306.2023.2167842. ISSN 0028-8306.
  10. ↑ Cubrinovski, Misko; Bradley, Brendon A; Elwood, Kenneth J; Johnston, David; Orchiston, Caroline; Sullivan, Timothy; Wotherspoon, Liam M (2020). "Wellington's earthquake resilience: Lessons from the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake". Earthquake Spectra. 36 (3): 1448–1484. doi:10.1177/8755293020919426. ISSN 8755-2930.
  11. ↑ Shaw, Bruce E.; Fry, Bill; Nicol, Andrew; Howell, Andrew; Gerstenberger, Matthew (2022). "An Earthquake Simulator for New Zealand". Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. 112 (2): 763–778. doi:10.1785/0120210087. ISSN 0037-1106.
  12. ↑ National Science Challenges (October 2021). Growing Kai under Increasing Dry: how does the primary sector in Aotearoa adapt to a changing climate with a changing drought profile?. Christchurch: Our Land and Water National Science Challenge. ISBN 978-0-473-59769-6.
  13. ↑ "TE TAI WHANAKE - Growing a stronger, more resilient Aotearoa". Resilence to Nature's Challenges. June 2024. Retrieved 10 December 2025.
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