“The Federal Government’s Digital Summit is an excellent platform to present our innovative concepts for digital resilience and to discuss them,” says Matthias Hollick, computer science professor at TU Darmstadt and scientific coordinator at emergenCITY.
The event, which will take place from October 21st to 22nd at Kap Europa in Frankfurt am Main, is seen as a dialogue forum. Over 1,500 participants from business, science, civil society and politics exchange ideas about digital innovations, digital sovereignty and international cooperation.
Digital disaster protection – innovative, resilient and safe
At the “Market of Digital Opportunities” held by the partner state Hesse in Kap Europa in Frankfurt am Main, the LOEWE center emergenCITY will be presenting itself as an exhibitor together with the Odenwaldkreis and the Fulda district in the area of Smart Living until Tuesday under the title “Digital disaster protection – innovative, resilient and safe”.
Matthias Hollick welcomed Federal Ministers Volker Wissing and Robert Habeck as the first guests on Monday morning, who, accompanied by the Hessian Digital Minister Kristina Sinemus, took a tour of the “Market of Digital Opportunities”. In a brief overview, he presented the ministers with the work of the interdisciplinary and cross-location research cooperation, in which the Technical University of Darmstadt, the University of Kassel and the Philipps University of Marburg are involved.
How can cities prepare for disasters and protect critical infrastructure such as energy and communications networks? How can resilient, digital information and communication technologies (ICT) help? This is what the LOEWE Center, funded by the state of Hesse, is researching.
At the stand until Tuesday, emergenCITY scientists Joachim Schulze and Frank Hessel, laboratory engineer Julian Euler and student Jakob Huth will be giving an insight in particular into the stand using three selected exhibits, a sensor box, the “Advertising Column 4.0” and the serious game “Krisopolis” as well as films the topic of emergency communication in city districts.
Mission “Digital Heinerblock” is presented
Specifically, they present the “Digital Heinerblock” project. emergenCITY supports the science city of Darmstadt in the transformation of a district into a traffic-calmed, climate-resilient and citizen-friendly district. Sensor boxes that are attached to street lights are intended to measure, among other things, fine dust, solar radiation, temperature and noise and to enable wireless communication in the event of a disaster.
The energy-autonomous “Advertising Column 4.0”, a conventional advertising pillar that is expanded to include a capital with a digital display and communication unit, can display information and warnings from authorities to residents even in the event of a long-lasting power outage. And in the serious game “Krisopolis,” which can be tried out on a large touch display at the Digital Summit, users can playfully prepare for an emergency in a city district. A new explanatory video with animated illustrations provides background information about the Digital Heinerblock.
Panel discussion on digital resilience
At a panel discussion on Monday evening, emergenCITY coordinator Matthias Hollick introduced the topic of “digital resilience” in a lecture and explained what fundamentals and solutions emergenCITY is researching in order to get through disasters safely with the help of resilient, digital ICT systems . He then met with Johann Saathoff, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of the Interior and Homeland, Kristina Sinemus, Hesse’s Minister for Digitalization and Innovation, Elke Anderl, Managing Director of Commercial T-Systems International and Martin Zeidler, Head of the Crisis Management Department at the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Relief about establishing a national center for digital resilience in disasters.
“From our point of view, we need a national effort and a structured, continuous exchange between science and application with the involvement of all stakeholders,” says Matthias Hollick, summarizing his point of view.
Other TU researchers were also involved in the digital summit: Professor Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi from the System Security Lab in the Department of Computer Science was a panelist on “Deepfakes: Technological Developments and Ethical Questions” and “Edge AI – Potential for Digital Sovereignty and Innovative AI Applications”. Professor Petra Gehring and Professor Andreas Kaminski, Institute of Philosophy, spoke on the topic “Data
