Mar
29, 2026
Events
As part of this year’s emergenCITY Week, a Distinguished Lecture will be held featuring Prof. Dr. Hans Rudolf Heinimann. Hans Heinimann is also a member of the emergenCITY Scientific Advisory Board. With this lecture, emergenCITY welcomes an internationally renowned expert in resilience research, risk management, and the handling of complex crisis and disaster situations.
Titel: “Collective Action Resilience: A Closer Look”
Speaker: Prof. em. Hans Rudolf Heinimann
Datum: May 8, 2026, 2:30–3:10 p.m.
Venue: Georg-Christoph-Lichtenberg-Haus, Dieburger Str. 241, 64287 Darmstadt + online via Zoom
Registration is not required this time
About the Lecture
Almost all of today’s systems are made up of three subsystems: (1) a biophysical system under control, (2) a control system, and (3) a human system. Managing system disruptions is typically handled by collective organizational bodies that must define and execute effective actions to limit degradation, re-stabilize critical functions, and reconfigure the system architecture. While this responsibility is not new, the human element is often more critical than technology, procedures, and tools, raising questions about how to make these organizational bodies highly reliable and resilient. This talk aims to develop a framework for collective action resilience that builds on and expands previous scientific work on high-reliability organizations (HRO) and learning organizations. It begins with case studies of successful and unsuccessful crisis management, then revisits some core concepts of resilience thinking. It concludes with a framework that replaces the traditional disaster management cycle—response, recovery, mitigation, and preparedness—with a set of guiding principles and an adapted management cycle aligned with resilience thinking. Since resilience and resilience management are social constructs, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. The framework presented is designed to promote continuous improvement of resilient disaster management systems, which must be tailored to specific contexts.
About the Speaker
Hans Rudolf Heinimann was a Professor of Forest Engineering at ETH Zurich from 1991 to 2020. He was a founding member and leader of the ETH Risk Center, and from 2014 to 2019, he served as the Director of the ‘Future Resilient Systems’ research program in Singapore. Between 2004 and 2009, he was a fellow at the Collegium Helveticum, a center for advanced studies jointly sponsored by ETH and the University of Zurich, where he focused on interdisciplinary research. His research interests included mathematically spatially explicit optimization of land use, risk-based management of natural hazards, and understanding and improving the resilience of large-scale systems at the Singapore-ETH Centre, where he collaborated with a team of about 60 PhD students and postdoctoral fellows. His work had international connections in various ways. He was a Visiting Professor at Oregon State University (1999-2000), the University of Tokyo (summer 2009), and the Australian National University (2013). He also actively participated in the IUFRO (International Union of Forest Research Organizations) for many years, most recently as coordinator of the Division ‘Forest Operations Engineering and Management’ and as a member of the board. He is an individual member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences SATW. He also contributed to the academic community in various roles, including Vice-Rector of Teaching (2007-2013), Head of Department, Director of Studies, Head of Institute, and Member of Faculty Recruitment Committees. He continues to serve as an Associate Editor of a scientific journal and a reviewer for several journals focused on risk and resilience.
