Greater Wellington's combined earthquake hazard maps bring together the separate components of earthquake risk (such as ground shaking, active faulting, slope failure, liquefaction, and tsunami potential) into single maps for Wellington, Porirua, Hutt Valley and Kapiti.

The purpose of these maps is to provide better information about the risks from a major earthquake and help find ways in which these risks can be reduced. The maps will be of particular interest to emergency management professionals, local authorities, planners, engineers, and insurance companies.

The maps were developed in painstaking detail by dividing each metropolitan area into 10m x 10m grids. For each grid cell, the expected damage to a typical slice of infrastructure from each hazard component was determined and combined with the other components to provide an overall assessment for that particular cell.

The combined value for each cell formed the basis for the colour-coded map. The colour codes show the relative hazard level.