Our story
New Zealand has a shaky history when it comes to earthquakes, and we've been a part of the response community for over two decades.
Earthquake hazard studies in the early 1990s highlighted the significant risk to our home city of Christchurch from regional faults including the New Zealand Alpine Fault. Dr Hamish Avery and Peter Coursey in University of Canterbury's Department of Civil and Natural Resources Engineering, developed strong motion seismographs for a Canterbury seismic network that would help understand regional seismicity and this risk. That network was called CanNet. Their research was supported by the Earthquake Commission, Technology NZ, The Mason Trust, the Christchurch City Council, Environment Canterbury and the University of Canterbury.
In 2003 former university academic Dr John Berrill and Dr Avery formed Canterbury Seismic Instruments Ltd (CSI) to provide these instruments commercially to GeoNet, New Zealand's then new national strong motion seismic network. We used our strong research base to develop the original CUSP monitoring systems with exceptional flexibility and capacity, using high-precision satellite positioning and timing, for almost any seismic, structural, geotechnical, geological or environmental situation. Half-way through our second decade, the CUSP family evolved to today's EQReponders, and we created the Sentinel Earthquake Resilience and Response service to expand the tools CSI offers New Zealand to tackle our unique seismic challenge. Two decades since starting, Canterbury Seismic is now New Zealand's leading supplier of structural and seismic monitoring solutions, and our instruments and systems are installed worldwide in buildings, dams, bridges, tunnels, landslides, infrastructure and seismic networks from Asia to Europe and from South America to Scandinavia and Iceland.
We are both an instrument and software manufacturer, and service provider.
The following graphic tracks several key technology, client, and earthquake moments in our history.
