Our ever evolving natural environment means we are refocusing our resilience efforts for Wellington city.
In the last 10 years, Wellington City Council and private building owners have invested in improving the city’s building and infrastructure, making it more resilient to natural disasters, particularly earthquakes.
The coming three years will see the Council increasing investment in adapting to climate change and supporting communities to plan what adaptation looks like for them. While increasing our investment focus on climate resilience, we will continue to support building owners adapt to central government building regulation requirements.
Responding and adapting to climate change is critically important for the resilience of our communities. This concerns everything from managing the impacts of climate change to actively reducing carbon emissions and waste. Wellingtonians will need to change how we live in and move around the city.
Insights
- 52 percent of Wellingtonians consider sustainability and the environment when making choices about what they do, buy or use (QoL survey 2020)
- 58 percent of Wellingtonians are worried or very worried about the impact of climate change and a further 32 percent are a little worried (QoL survey 2020)
- 87 percent of residents feel safe in the event of a moderate earthquake at home, while 73 percent feel safe in the event of a moderate earthquake at work (RMS 2021)
Activity planned for the next three years
Many decisions have been made in the past three years concerning management of the city’s resilience and adaptation to climate change. The Council will continue to take action regarding seismic strengthening and climate action to ensure the future resilience of Wellington.
Seismic Resilience
As of June 2022, there are 598 buildings in Wellington City which are classified as earthquake prone. The timeframe for undertaking seismic work for most buildings in Wellington is 15 years, however, buildings that have been identified as priority buildings have 7-and-a-half years. Of the 598 earthquake prone buildings, 228 owners are required to complete seismic work by 2027.
A significant level of construction activity would be required in the city to complete seismic strengthening, at a time when the building and construction sector is under cost and labour market pressures and will also be delivering multiple large, new infrastructure projects in the city. Over the coming term, the Council will continue to work with building owners to remediate their buildings by the required timeframes, with much of the seismic remediation work expected to be completed across the city by 2030.