Major earthquake in New Zealand

Image by Flickr user Ann (Helen) Deveraux and kindly made available under Creative Commons

A summer of natural disasters in various locations was further added to by events in Christchurch, New Zealand in the early hours of September the 4th.

A 7.1 magnitude quake struck a few miles outside the city at 4.35am

A great deal of damage was done to buildings in the area, and disruption is set to continue for some time, as people's lives have been shaken, and turned upside down. Services are disrupted, roads are shattered, and

There was the usual surge of 'citizen journalism' to add to the official media. I learnt more about the earthquake (and sooner) using the former than the latter.

The advent of Twitter also created another opportunity for immediate access to personal stories. Hashtags such as #christchurch and #nzquake offered a glimpse into people's lives, and some of my Twitter followers provided useful links and updates.

A useful article in the New Zealand Herald provided some background information and a few images. There are also links to some very useful videos.

As with the Boscastle floods, this could become a really useful case study for impact and regeneration, with the added bonus that there were no fatalities, something that was picked up in this excellent Telegraph article by Geoffrey Lean.

The SCI NEW ZEALAND blog has some great mapping resources for the area which were produced by Chris McDowall - this is also a good tip off to some other visualisation resources. The maps provide a great introduction to the science of visualisation.

Update: Over 100 000 homes were apparently damaged by the quake, and many are beyond repair.

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