After a summer of unprecedented heatwaves, energy crisis and a dramatic drought that made the interdependencies between the river transport and the energy infrastructure in Germany particularly noticeable, resilience and sustainability of infrastructure are an urgent topic. As such, it was a core theme of the International Symposium for Next Generation Infrastructure (ISNGI), a conference that took place in Rotterdam on September 7 – 9, 2022.

The emergenCITY team was represented by Prof. Jens Ivo Engels, Dr. Nadja Thiessen, Dr. Kateryna Zarembo, Michaela Leštáková and Steffen Haesler.

In their session „After the Floods 2021“, Prof. Engels and Dr. Thiessen offered a retrospective look on the flood events in Germany in 2021 with three presentations ranging from topics like flood risk management (Dr. Swenja Surminski), damages to bridges during the Ahrtal flooding (Lisa Burghardt) and a survey on infrastructure failures and coping strategies of the affected citizens (Steffen Haesler, Dr. Nadja Thiessen, Michaela Leštáková). Having performed a survey on the resilience of urban data platforms within the emergenCITY mission Knowledge Base, Michaela Leštáková contributed to the discussion on data driven infrastructure.

Much-needed perspectives from social sciences were presented in the session „Critical Infrastructure Resilience”, also organized by Prof. Engels and Dr. Thiessen. Here, Dr. Jiska Engelbert challenged the terms „critical infrastructure“ and „infrastructure resilience“ in her talk titled „The Politics of Critical Infrastructure“. Dr. Nadja Thiessen presented the work of the emergenCITY mission ReSON which develops an app for self-organisation of citizens in crises. An insight into inclusion challenges of digital infrastructure was given by Dr. Ralitsa Hiteva. Last but not least, Dr. Kateryna Zarembo, a new member of the emergenCITY team, talked about the role of ukrainian digital resistance through mobile applications in the Russian war against Ukraine.