The document summarizes GNS Science's experience communicating science during the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence crisis in New Zealand from 2010 to present. It describes the sequence of damaging earthquakes, their impacts, and GNS Science's science communication activities. It discusses what worked well in the communication efforts, including cross-organization engagement and rapid sharing of high quality information. It also examines difficulties like being underprepared for the scale of the event and technical advice not being strongly integrated into the official response process. The document outlines plans to improve future crisis communication, such as developing engagement protocols and exercises in advance.

1. GNS Science
Communicating science during the
Canterbury Earthquake Sequence crisis,
New Zealand
22 Feb, 2011
Kelvin Berryman
General Manager Strategic Relationships
Hazards Division
GNS Science
k.berryman@gns.cri.nz

2. GNS ScienceOECD Workshop on Strategic Crisis Management, Geneva, May 2016
The Canterbury Earthquake Sequence
– Sept 2010 to Present
• 15 months of damaging events
• Events started in the west and migrated toward the city
• 38 events above magnitude 5
• Feb 2016 event not a surprise to scientists but significant psychological impact

3. GNS Science
The Canterbury earthquake sequence and NZ impact
• A large (for NZ) natural hazard event in a
small economy
• ~10% of NZ’s 4.5 million people directly
impacted
• Total direct loss estimates c. $45b NZD
– about 8-10% GDP
• NZ’s annual GDP about the same size as
Munich-Re or IBM annual revenue
Regional economy is strong (based on agriculture)
• Port, airport, road and rail networks had very little downtime
• 95% of businesses continued to operate albeit with downturn in tourism,
education, and hospitality
• Some migration away from Canterbury but by 2015 net increase over
pre-earthquake levels
• Early government support for local business continuity and workforce
OECD Workshop on Strategic Crisis Management, Geneva, May 2016

4. GNS Science
Science Communication Activities
• Public meetings
• Media briefings
• Formal and informal briefings to EM Controller,
Ministers, government agencies, City Council,
• Talkback radio, TV news (1200 accredited news
media in the immediate response phase),
newspapers
• Social media via GeoNet (national monitoring
network) and Emergency Operations Centre
OECD Workshop on Strategic Crisis Management, Geneva, May 2016

5. GNS Science
Science within the Crisis Communication Structure
OECD Workshop on Strategic Crisis Management, Geneva, May 2016

6. GNS Science
What Worked Well – Why?
• Good cross-organisation engagement
– Sept 2010 was a good practice
exercise, small country “everyone
knows everyone”, ‘can do’ attitude;
• Motivated science sector dedicated to
community and economic well-being;
• Information on the earthquakes and
aftershocks was rapid, high quality,
and easily digested;
• With a couple of exceptions relationships with media were frequent, constructive,
and effective;
• GeoNet and the EOC were monitoring,
and using social media;
• Government agencies engaged with the
sense-making efforts of the science sector
and acted on the advice.
OECD Workshop on Strategic Crisis Management, Geneva, May 2016

7. GNS Science
What were the difficulties and conflicts
• Science sector underprepared to respond to the scale of the event
• Pre-event planning on activities, roles and responsibilities was weak
• Technical advice was not strongly cemented into official response processes
• Science was sometimes debated in public that led to diminished confidence
among the public
• Some media continued to look for sensational stories, or were convinced
information was being with-held from the media and public
• Communicating science was generally too much ‘uni-directional’
• Science sector was significantly under-resourced and was largely reactive to
rapidly developing needs
• Rare, long-lived sequence of earthquakes – sense-making very difficult
OECD Workshop on Strategic Crisis Management, Geneva, May 2016

8. GNS Science
Sense-making and communication in
Canterbury Recovery - it is complicated!
OECD Workshop on Strategic Crisis Management, Geneva, May 2016

9. GNS Science
What do we plan to do differently?
• Provide greater resource for the science response – sense-making and especially
crisis communications
• Improve engagement with key science stakeholders now with protocols and SOP’s
• Exercise various crisis scenarios with partners in crisis response to improve
preparedness
• Continue engagement with media on BAU basis bringing research results to the
public to develop good relationships for crisis response
• Organise our science response with the same structure as the CDEM SOP
• Continue to strengthen engagement (listen) with
the private sector, NGO’s and community now
so that science knowledge is better utilised in
future (natural hazard) crises
OECD Workshop on Strategic Crisis Management, Geneva, May 2016

10. GNS Science
To respond to questions posed for this session
• What are examples of successful cooperation, partnerships and good practice that
exist between the public and private sectors in crisis communication?
I don’t think the NZ experience is very good but there is better engagement now that
hopefully continues into the next crisis
• What practices in using social media in times of crisis has the private sector found
useful that could be transferred to public authorities?
• What are the human resources that would be needed to do this?
• Are there benefits to establishing an international crisis communication platform
that would coordinate messaging between multiple public authorities and other
actors?
Identifying good practices and making them easily available will always be of value at
times of crisis, but I do believe that local cultural and institutional situations must be
respected. Guidance from an international platform would provide value in many crises
but communication must be locally owned otherwise local actors are dis-empowered.
OECD Workshop on Strategic Crisis Management, Geneva, May 2016