Research

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.

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.

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.

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.