1.11 Regional Seismic Hazard Assessments, New Zealand

• New Zealand has a national Government, 17 Regional Councils, and 72 territorial authorities.

• Under legislation, e.g. the Resource Management Act 1991, Regional Council responsibilities include "natural hazard mitigation" while territorial authorities seek to control "… avoidance and mitigation of natural hazards ...".

• In this legislative environment seismic and volcanic hazard assessments, deterministic and probabalistic, have been made for all of New Zealand, from scales of 1:2,000,000 and less. Detailed hazard assessments at scales as large as 1:500 have been made of particular sites. Risk assessments follow on from this work.

• - SKM, GNS, and Beca are all active in hazard and risk assessment.