Earthquake mitigation of WA regional towns: York case study - Final report
Western Australia has a region of elevated seismicity inland from Perth where there are located several older regional towns having a predominance of older unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings. The town of York, situated approximately 37km from the epicentre was also significantly damaged. The combination of high hazard and vulnerability in this region points to a need for informed mitigation measures. This project entailed undertaking a mitigation implementation study of York, Western Australia’s oldest inland town, which has many valuable historical buildings that are vulnerable to damage by a large earthquake.
Utilising the outcomes of the project a range of mitigation strategies have been virtually applied to the town’s URM buildings. This has enabled an assessment of the effectiveness of these interventions on community risk and emergency management (EM) logistics in the context of rare, but credible, earthquakes. In this report, the research and its outcomes are presented and discussed. Further, recommendations are made for future retrofit strategy implementation in York and more broadly in Western Australia. In particular, a new NDRP project is described that will build upon this BNHCRC project in testing the application of the measures in actual retrofit work undertaken in York.