Many damaging earthquakes in the past, including the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes and 2016 M7.8 KaikÅura earthquake, have demonstrated that accurate characterisation of in-situ dynamic characteristics of sedimentary soils is essential to satisfactorily predict earthquake ground motion intensities at a given site. However, despite the high seismicity of New Zealand and the past lessons on the influence of shallow local geological conditions on surface ground motions, little progress has been made in characterising the dynamic properties of soils across many New Zealand urban areas.