Mission Digital Heinerblock
Resilience of digital cities has to be investigated as the interplay of technology with social and societal aspects, as well as the use of urban space incorporating historical knowledge. Within mission Digital Heinerblock, we examine that relation by supporting the Wissenschaftsstadt Darmstadt in its efforts for establishing the first Heinerblock. The mission monitors but, together with the local citizens, also helps designing that process of transformation of an urban quarter in achieving a more sustainable concept for traffic and space usage. This way, the quarter also becomes a living lab for application and evaluation of concepts developed within emergenCITY.
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The first Heinerblock will be established in Darmstadt’s Lichtenbergviertel in spring 2024. The Heinerblocks are the concept of superblocks adapted to Darmstadt, similar to those successfully deployed in Barcelona or Vienna. In the future, open spaces within the blocks will primarily serve to improve the urban climate and interaction between people. emergenCITY accompanies the transformation of the Lichtenbergviertel as part of the "Digital Heinerblock" mission with around forty sensor boxes, which are mounted to streetlights and measure the effects on the local city climate. In addition, we propose ideas for repurposing urban space within the quarter to improve the quality of life. The prototype of the advertising pillar 4.0 is also to be installed and evaluated at Riegerplatz. As part of this research collaboration, the LOEWE center emergenCITY and Ströer Media Deutschland GmbH are jointly developing a digital pillar capitol that will expand existing advertising pillars so that they can warn the public of crises and dangers. By integrating photovoltaics and battery storage, the advertising pillar 4.0 is energy self-sufficient and can continue to warn the public for up to 72 hours even in the event of a large-scale power outage. We use the observations and results from these experiments to make predictions on the relation between the inner structure of city quarters and their resilience.
Research Question
How can an integrated and inclusive transformation of urban space be designed? How can low-power sensor networks use resilient communication protocols to support disaster relief?
Program Areas in the Mission
City and Society (SG)
The program area SG will focus on the question of awareness aiming to assess the state of preparedness of the population. Emphasis lies on events related to climate change such as summer heat waves and heavy storms. Innovative methods such as gamification and the integration of historical knowledge are applied in order to develop a guideline for the integrative and inclusive transformation to climate-adaptive cities.
Team: Joachim Schulze Nadja Thiessen Jens Ivo Engels Annette Rudolph-Cleff
Communication (KOM)
The program area KOM monitors the Lichtenbergviertel’s transformation with a network of sensor boxes, which can measure temperature, air humidity, particulate matter, noise, and usage of urban space. The collected data will be made public for interested citizens. Beyond measuring, the sensor boxes provide a wireless testbed for evaluating novel communication protocols and concepts for functional morphing in the field. To achieve that, the boxes are equipped with hardware for communication technologies like WiFi, Bluetooth, and LoRa.
Team: Frank Hessel Matthias Hollick
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