The NZLC was established in 1999 to maintain a watching brief over the activities of the various regional Lifelines Groups. The NZLC seeks to ensure that new ideas and key developments are actively exchanged between the groups.

The focus of the New Zealand Lifelines Committee (NZLC) activities can be summarised as:
"Enhancing the connectivity of lifeline utility organisations across agency and sector boundaries in order to improve infrastructure resilience"


The NELC has adopted three themes to frame work on infrastructure resilience. These are the need for:

• Robust assets, or satisfactory alternative service continuity arrangements
• Effective coordination, pre and post-event, at national and local levels
• Realistic end-user expectations, so that users are risk-aware and better able to consider options

• Advising Lifelines Groups on best practices across a range of activities, including encouraging new projects and supporting them by offering information on methodology and other learnings from projects in other regions.
• Providing a link between Lifelines activities and government – relevant government programmes include Lifelines work within the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management and national infrastructure planning within Treasury
• Promoting resilience-related research and disseminating the results from regional, national and international research, inter alia so that improvements can be included as businesses cases are developed for new investments. Capturing the learnings from the recent Christchurch earthquakes is a key focus.
• Organising the annual National Lifelines Forum. The Forum updates representatives from Lifeline Groups and national utilities on latest developments, and provides an opportunity to develop positions on common resilience-related issues.

• Telecom NZ Limited
• Transpower New Zealand Ltd
• New Zealand Transport Agency
• Vector Limited
• Water New Zealand
• Ministry of Civil Defence &
  Emergency Management
• Ministry of Economic Development
• Earthquake Commission
• GNS Science