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Clap, clap to industry for quake response

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and city mayor Bob Parker have both branded it a "miracle" that no-one died in last weekend's Christchurch earthquake.
Written by Darren Greenwood, Contributor

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and city mayor Bob Parker have both branded it a "miracle" that no-one died in last weekend's Christchurch earthquake.

The magnitude of the quake was as great as that in Haiti, where over 200,000 died. So why did New Zealand escape fatalities from such a powerful disaster? Many reports credit the timing of the quake, which was in the early hours when many will have still been asleep.

But rather than being a miracle, I would say the efforts of Kiwis, particularly its tech sector, can take credit for averting tragedy in this multibillion-dollar disaster.

Central to this would be the fine engineering of the many Christchurch buildings, quite different to those in Haiti. New Zealand's capital Wellington is one of the world's leading centres in earthquake technologies.

However, infromation technology also has a role to play in averting disaster. It might not be able to predict earthquakes, but by monitoring the quake zones, it can help assess damage and prepare responses.

Technology can also get quake information out via blogs and Twitter, to warn people before and during the event and to organise fundraising efforts after the disaster is over.

However, for blogs and Twitter to work, tech infrastructure has to survive the earthquake. The phone networks in Canterbury held up well last weekend, including the much criticised XT network from Telecom, as did the datacentres.

In a show of tech industry solidarity, those companies whose infrastructure was not so lucky can get help from the industry to fix their problems.

Unfortunately, there have also been online scams that target those trying to give money to earthquake victims.

Ignoring that, however, the tech sector can take heart from the valuable role it played in saving Christchurch from death and disaster.

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