Heinerblock Rally for Families

On Saturday, March 21, Darmstadt’s Lichtenbergblock turned into a hands-on research site. Equipped with puzzle booklets, pens, and stamp cards, more than 50 children and their parents explored the Heinerblock Rally – a discovery tour through ten stations focused on digital resilience and crisis preparedness, hosted by emergenCITY and TU Darmstadt’s DiReX Application and Transfer Center.

What Happened

The tour kicked off with a guided walk led by Aurora DeMeehl: the Darmstadt showgirl guided young and old alike through the Lichtenbergblock with wit and charm. While the youngest participants eagerly hunted for hidden picture details, the older ones tackled the riddles in the booklet. At four hands-on stations designed by TU Darmstadt students, crisis preparedness became tangible: children talked through cup-and-string phones, built a water tower out of water bottles, and worked together to figure out what belongs in an emergency backpack.

“We’re delighted that the rally, which is meant to playfully convey knowledge and research around digital resilience, was so well received on the very first day,” said Michèle Knodt, DiReX director and professor of political science at TU Darmstadt. “After all, crises like power outages or heavy rainfall are becoming more frequent. Those who are prepared can react faster in an emergency.”

Since last year, researchers from emergenCITY and DiReX have been conducting on-site research in the Lichtenbergblock in cooperation with the City of Darmstadt, focused on resilient crisis communication and smart neighborhood development. Two demonstrators form the core of this work: the Litfaßsäule 4.0 (a digital advertising column) on Riegerplatz displays information and warnings on a screen, and 40 Heinerboxen collect anonymous environmental and traffic data. In the future, the Heinerboxen are meant to be able to form an emergency network in the event that power, internet, or mobile networks fail.

“A rally as a discovery tour through the neighborhood gives us an important opportunity to reach and inform people on-site about our work,” explained Matthias Hollick, scientific coordinator of emergenCITY and professor of secure mobile networking at TU Darmstadt. “This kind of social resilience is also an important building block of our research.”