"Improving the resilience for the region and for New Zealand is critically important."
The funding will commence on next year, with the project due to be completed by June 30, 2019.
The project would scope the current situation, and develop a credible worst-case scenario to inform the consideration of the impacts and consequences of a subduction event.
It would also produce an initial response plan to a potentially major earthquake and tsunami that would have a major impact on New Zealand.
Subduction zones like Hikurangi, where the Pacific Plate dives down or ''subducts'' beneath the eastern North Island, produce the planet's biggest and deadliest earthquakes — also referred to as megathrust earthquakes — as well as devastating tsunami.
It is arguably New Zealand's most significant active fault and is capable of generating a magnitude 8.5 earthquake that, in addition to widespread ground shaking, is also likely to produce a tsunami, coastal uplift and subsidence, landslides and liquefaction.
Civil Defence Minister Kris Faafoi said the grant was awarded from the 2017 Resilience Fund, an annual fund of $889,000 administered by the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management (MCDEM).
"Our regions are at the forefront of developing innovative, practical and cost effective solutions to look after Kiwis and our visitors. By supporting these initiatives, we can foster and build on New Zealand's world-leading approach to emergency management while creating flow-on benefits for the rest of the country.
"New Zealand and its people are exposed to a wide range of natural hazards. These projects will help us to manage our exposure to the risks that these hazards present, keeping us safer when emergencies happen."
Applications were considered by a panel against criteria with emphasis on improved collaboration, improved resilience locally and regionally, and consistent approaches.
The East Coast application was made by the Hawke's Bay Regional Council and Hawke's Bay Civil Defence Emergency Management Group collectively on behalf of Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Hawke's Bay, Tararua, Wellington and East Coast LAB.
The announcement comes in the same week that a US research ship set sail from Australia, as part of a research voyage intended to explore further details about teh subduction zone.
The expedition, jointly led by NIWA and the University of Auckland, is the first of two aboard the scientific drilling research vessel JOIDES Resolution, operated by the US National Science Foundation.
The scientists will spend six weeks, including Christmas and New Year, at sea studying two main features of the area: slow-slip earthquakes and submarine landslides.
The public will be invited to attend a live video broadcast from the research vessel, where they will be given a tour of the ship and meet some of the scientists and crew on board.
Scientists involved in the land-based component of this work will be at the ship–to-shore event in Napier, which would take places on December 5, at 7pm at the LAB, a natural hazards education space at the National Aquarium.
That event has been arranged by East Coast LAB (Life at the Boundary), a project which makes it easy and exciting to learn more about natural hazards and how they affect communities living on the coast near the Hikurangi plate boundary.
"We want to help ensure the communities are aware of the research that is going on and also understand their earthquake and tsunami risk", Kate Boersen of East Coast LAB said.