For the final time, the emergenCITY Week brought together emergenCITY researchers to engage in interdisciplinary exchange and plan future research.
As in previous years, research associates, principal investigators (PIs), and the emergenCITY Scientific Advisory Board gathered also 2026 for two days at the Georg-Christoph-Lichtenberg-Haus to share the latest research developments and foster collaboration across disciplines. This year, the approaching end of LOEWE funding for emergenCITY in December 2026 prompted the program to include several retrospectives and open up a discussion on the future of research into the resilience of digital cities.
During the opening of the event, Ralf Steinmetz, former principal investigator and now Distinguished Emeritus at emergenCITY, looked back to the start of emergenCITY. He noted that the idea of building resilient, reliable, and adaptable systems was not new when emergenCITY was founded. For more than 20 years, its research topics had been addressed in various predecessor projects. However, in pursuing the establishment of the LOEWE Center emergenCITY, Steinmetz, together with other emergenCITY PIs, aimed to bring together dedicated individuals to conduct research on resilient digital cities in an atmosphere of commitment and enjoyment.
“Never give up. The topic is more important today than ever,” the now-emeritus professor urged the audience by the of his speech.
Utz Rödig, Professor of Computer Science at University College Cork and a member of the emergenCITY Scientific Advisory Board, also emphasized:
“The research on what we now call critical infrastructure is not new. The public perception changed quite a bit in the past few years since the start of emergenCITY. Everyone understands the need of it.”
Rödig emphazised that emergenCITY has gained international visibility through its research contributions, which emerge from a unique combination of research topics spanning various disciplines. He pointed out that the research center’s infrastructure has made it possible to produce not only testbeds and papers but also practical demonstrators in real-world application such as the Heinerbox and Krisopolis. From scientists who began their work via Zoom in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a research community has grown that achieves societal impact and is recognized for its pioneering role on the resilience of digital cities.
“I believe that you have established yourself as a place that knows how to improve resilience of systems,” concluded Rödig.
Satoshi Tadokoro also reiterated the international significance and application-oriented research in the field of first response in crisis situations that emergenCITY has achieved in recent years. He is an associate professor at the Tough Cyberphysical AI Research Center at Tohoku University in Japan and also a member of emergenCITY’s scientific advisory board.
During the course of the event, emergenCITY staff members presented selected research projects for each of the center’s four program areas.
From the Information program area, Markus Henkel presented how smart home technologies can complement existing warning systems in the event of a crisis. Marcian Seeger discussed work on ad-hoc data management in crisis situations from Thorsten Papenbrock’s Big Data Analytics group at Philipps University of Marburg. Zsolt István, professor in the Systems Group at TU Darmstadt, introduced approaches to making systems more resilient using Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) in Edge Computing.
From the Communication program area, emergenCITY alumnus Julian Zobel talked about the idea of using Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN) in satellite communications. Christian Eckrich presented resilience approaches for and through distributed sensing, particularly in the field of radar sensors. Frank Hessel revisited the development of the Heinerbox, a sensor box for environmental data and emergency communication testing, which emergenCITY has installed last year in Darmstadt’s Lichtenbergblock.
Nadja Thiessen summarized a similarly tangible research result for the City and Society program area: the publicly released mobile serious game Krisopolis. emergenCITY alumnus Lucas Flath presented a case study on the coordination of various actors in flood risk management using the city of Mörfelden-Walldorf as an example, and Avikal Somvanshi introduced his research, which examines living conditions for vulnerable groups during a heat wave combined with a power outage.
For the Cyber-Physical Systems program area, Michaela Leštáková and Kevin Logan presented their research on resilient water distribution systems. Christoph Löser and Stefan Fabian introduced four approaches to rescue robotics that can help locating victims in complex, multi-story environments during disasters: a radar system capable of detecting vital signs through walls, a multi-story elevation map, and the open-hardware rescue robot Athena and its flippers, which it uses to autonomously navigate around obstacles.
A poster session provided further insights and opportunities for in-depth discussions. In addition to numerous posters, Yanni Mei presented [ShadAR]( https://www.emergencity.de/de/ news/demonstrating-an-on-demand-xr-tool-at-the-chi-2026/), an application that allows users to create on-demand augmented reality images by verbally describing how they want to see the world. In addition, the new Extreme Communication mission introduced itself for the first time. Researchers here are working to establish communication even under extreme conditions using drones and various network connections, in order to respond quickly and efficiently to a crisis.
Greetings and presentations during emergenCITY Week also addressed the approaching end of emergenCITY’s funding period in December. Heribert Warzecha, Vice President for Academic Affairs at TU Darmstadt, highlighted the center’s interdisciplinary approach and the translation of research ideas into practice through dialogue with the public.
“emergenCITY is an absolute success story,” summarized the TU Vice President.
From an internal perspective, emergenCITY Coordinator Matthias Hollick looked back on more than 35,000 emails containing the keyword emergenCITY until today. He thanked all the researchers, the Executive Board and the administrative office, as well as the participating universities, the funding officials at the Hessian Ministry of Science and Research, Art and Culture, and the scientific advisory board of emergenCITY for their work, dedication and support. emergenCITY has not only produced award-winning scientific results but also an impact that can help make this world a better place, he resumed.
“This project really brought me joy. I firmly believe science is a team achievement,” Hollick concluded.
Max Mühlhäuser, former Principal Investigator and now Distinguished Emeritus at emergenCITY, stated clearly that the end of emergenCITY marks the loss of a unique research hub.
“With emergenCITY, the world’s only highly interdisciplinary center on digital resilience is coming to an end,” Mühlhäuser critizied.
He marked this closure, especially at times when resilience is the most important issue—including for democracy—as disastrous. Instead, resilience, understood in an interdisciplinary sense, should be a top priority across various disciplines, and a center like emergenCITY should be conceived on an even larger scale, he advocated.
After December, various aspects of emergenCITY’s research will continue elsewhere, as Hollick and emergenCITY board member Michèle Knodt emphasized. A follow-up project, the Digital Resilience Xchange (DiReX) Application and Transfer Center, has already been launched to accelerate the transfer of emergenCITY research findings into real-world application. emergenCITY Principal Investigator Björn Scheuermann also presented plans for a new focus on resilience through satellites and resilience in space. Further proposals and projects are in the planning and application stages. The emergenCITY Lab will continue to operate within the TU Darmstadt and will relocate to the TU campus in the city center eventually.
