The University of Canterbury was founded by scholars from the University of Oxford in 1873 and is New Zealand’s second oldest university. Its main campus is in Christchurch, New Zealand, only 5km from the city centre. In 2011 the University had in excess of 18,000 enrolled students—the vast majority being domestic students with 1300 students coming from overseas. The University has six halls of residence and over 1800 students living on campus.
The emergency management section of the website provides visitors and students with a single-point access to current alerts as well as emergency and action plans. The ‘8 key things to do’ section starts and ends with ‘keeping calm’ – often difficult to do in an emergency situation or the earthquakes in 2011-12.
Content on the site covers preparedness information, action steps during an emergency, how and where to get help, who to go to for assistance, and information about their own on-campus rescue team. There is a resources and training area and a complete section on “’Academic Aftershocks’ - What really happens to a university after an earthquake” which is a series of 16 short movie files showing how California State University worked through the aftermath of the Northridge earthquake in 1994.