QuakeStar

About

QuakeStar is a rating system for a building's ability to withstand an Earthquake in terms of safety, cost and time to repair.

Story

Advantages of a star system are:
1. It allows a quick assessment of a building’s resilience by stakeholders such as visitors, guests, tenants, employees, owners, builders, banks, insurance companies and investors

2. It is communicated in an easily understood, internationally understandable “symbol” language

3. It can hasten decisions by funders and insurers, providing the convergence of expert opinion immediately

4. It can give added value to owners through lesser annual insurance premiums, a wider tenant base, and a greater investment value to those who seek to build to the seismic conditions prevailing

5. For engineers, it offers a method of achieving the comfort of approval, and possibly advice, from, respected peers, while communicating to stakeholders and the wider public the true value of good engineering practice

6. It can be adopted internationally, (adjusted for each countries’ unique building materials and methods) and with the application of on-going peer review of the system, and the total integrity from those entrusted with its application, can give rise to an internationally respected body allowing multi-national entities to make decisions on investment, funding and insurance on buildings without the necessity to examine and understand local codes and regulations and the diligence of their application

7. It can be applied to new and existing buildings –
a. for new buildings, it offers a set of goals and aspirations which can give rise to security to future generations
b. Given the current earthquake-prone nature of New Zealand, all existing buildings will be the subject of regular reviews as to soundness, both for insurance, and for wider on-going valuation, purposes – the application of the star concept to existing buildings should not therefore, anticipating the effect of those reviews, unduly prejudice existing owners. On the contrary, it offers a quick and ready set of marketplace –recognised objectives for assisting with designing retrofit of sub-standard structures.

8. In the process of accumulating data on international best-practice method and materials, and applying such best-practice, an Authority can accumulate expertise, experience and intellectual property which can be exported to countries or areas where there are deficiencies in the quality of engineering and design practices.

"Welcome To QuakeStarQuakeStar is an incorporated society formed to establish and operate an earthquake rating scheme for New Zealand buildings, including houses.The aim is to improve the management of earthquake risk in the property industry by providing owners, tenants, users and the public a basic means to distinguish between buildings on the basis of assessed earthquake performance in terms of safety, damage and repair time."