23/08/2026
Closing out the night for our Rotomoana Talks event, we have ‘Whānau Lead Way to Strengthen Marae Resilience’ with Haukapuanui and Sonny Vercoe!
Haukapuanui and Sonny are former NPM Raumati interns and currently engineering PhD students at the University of Auckland. The brothers have committed their doctoral research to ensure marae are more resilient in natural hazard events.
“When natural hazard events occur, marae are always the ones that mobilise rapidly, our people just do that normally anyway. Marae are often the focal point for whānau and the wider community in times of need. We know that marae are always in a state of preparedness - with tangihanga and large events. In many cases, marae are under-resourced, with many having infrastructure, services, and buildings in need of repair or upgrade. Despite the complexity of hosting the multitudes with limited resources, marae have demonstrated effective emergency management, response and relief in recent hazard events,” says Haukapuanui.
Sonny’s research is focusing on the earthquake resilience of wharenui while Haukapuanui has looked at the infrastructure resilience and hazard exposure of marae throughout Aotearoa.
Haukapuanui has conducted a geospatial hazard analysis of 869 marae nationwide to assess how they could be impacted by natural hazards including flooding, earthquakes, landslides, liquefaction and tsunami.
He has used GIS (Geographic Information System Mapping) and overlayed different datasets to identify which marae are a risk to specific natural hazards. His findings showed that in a 500-year tsunami, five to 10 percent are exposed to inundation, 10-20 percent of marae are in tsunami evacuation zones, 20-30 percent are prone to earthquake-induced landslides, and 30-40 percent are susceptible to liquefaction and flooding.
