National Disaster Resilience Strategy

Globally, the economic cost of disasters has increased steadily over the last 40 years, in large part because of the expansion of the built environment. Damage to infrastructure and buildings pose huge costs, public and private.

However, it is the impact on wellbeing that can have the most profound effect. On 22 February 2011, New Zealand suffered one of its worst ever disasters with the Canterbury earthquake. In 2013, the Treasury estimated the capital costs to be over $40 billion, the equivalent of 20% of gross domestic product. Beyond the tangible costs of damage and rebuild, lay a web of social and economic disruption and upheaval. There were flow-on effects to business and employment, psychological trauma, dislocation of communities, creation or exacerbation of social issues, disruption to normal lives and livelihoods, and uncertainty in the future.