Research – emergenCITY

In 2050, two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities. Their citizens are increasingly using digital infrastructures in all relevant areas: energy, transport, health, and administration. This makes us dependent on these systems and, at the same time, makes them vulnerable to natural disasters, human or technical failure, crime, and terrorism. The LOEWE Center emergenCITY is working on solutions that make our cities safe, even in crises. The solution concept is interdisciplinary and includes modern information and communication technology as well as the historical, legal, social, and structural aspects of urban planning. emergenCITY wants to create robust infrastructures that guarantee help during and after a crisis, to enable a return to normality as quickly as possible.

Program Areas

City and Society (SG)

The program area city and society (SG) covers fundamental historical, political, social, and legal aspects of crises and resilient ICT in digital cities. Researchers focus on governance and effective political measures for disaster preparedness and the reduction of social and spatial inequalities in the digital city. Legal aspects are covered particularly in the context of the design of novel and disaster- resilient technical systems. They further cover a historic perspective on large-scale disasters and the corresponding reactions by the population.

Principal Investigators: Michèle Knodt Gerrit Hornung Jens Ivo Engels Carolin Bock Christian Reuter Annette Rudolph-Cleff

Information (INF)

Within the area of information (INF), the focus lies on autonomous composition of ICT services from whatever resources still available. Especially the role of mobile edge computing as well as distributed and decentralized services to support disaster response and recovery is analyzed. This includes 3D modelling from heterogeneous data sources, detection of relevant events from data stream analysis, etc.

Principal Investigators: Iryna Gurevych Mira Mezini Max Mühlhäuser Christian Reuter Stefan Roth Guido Salvaneschi Bernhard Seeger

Communication (KOM)

Within the area of communication (KOM), we focus on the design of communication systems that have inbuild resilience and are responsive to any kind of crisis/disaster. These systems shall be able to self-prepare decentralized and infrastructureless operation prior to the disaster and able to support basic communication services under any circumstances.

Principal Investigators: Bernd Freisleben Matthias Hollick Anja Klein Heinz Koeppl Ralf Steinmetz

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS)

The area of cyber-physical systems (CPS) covers the topic of (semi-)autonomous robotic platforms and systems for emergency response and recovery in very complex environments. These systems further facilitate to establish communication backbones in absence of infrastructure and investigate distributed approaches for autonomous energy supply.

Principal Investigators: Kurt Geihs Uwe Klingauf Peter Pelz Florian Steinke Oskar von Stryk Abdelhak Zoubir

emergenCITY Lab

The four program areas come together in the central emergenCITY lab to evaluate and demonstrate the fundamental research results in practical scenarios. The lab is, therefore, the focal point of the interdisciplinary and holistic emergenCITY approach. We bring our expertise together within cross-cutting research missions.