Resilience and disaster research at the LOEWE center emergenCITY not only leads to theoretical results. The interdisciplinary collaboration between different disciplines also generates ideas that translate research into application-oriented projects. With numerous demonstrators — prototypical research objects and environments — emergenCITY aims to show hands on how solutions and tools for crisis scenarios could look like. Such improvements could ultimately be incorporated into disaster response on a larger scale. The Kassel-based photographer and filmmaker Sascha Mannel has made short films about seven demonstrators, which emergenCITY has now published in a playlist on YouTube.

The scope of demonstrators is wide: emergenCITY developed a resilient app for local neighborhoods that can provide communication tools even when conventional telecommunications networks fail. With the intelligent rescue robot Scout, emergenCITY researchers can protect and save human lives by using Scout to explore dangerous areas and search for injured people.

Rescue Robot Scout ascends a wooden ramp inside a building. Rescue Robot Scout at work exploring the inside of a building. (c) Sascha Mannel

Many of the demonstrators are the result of intensive collaboration between very different academic disciplines. A good example is the electricity self-sufficient house eHUB. The real-world lab serves emergenCITY for various developments around the crisis scenario of a long-lasting power outage. The main goal is to help to ensure that life in the eHUB and its neighborhood would not completely collapse even during such a disaster.

Architects designed the building, and social scientists surveyed a cross-section of the population on their general willingness to share electricity in the event of a crisis. Technical departments also developed a special smart speaker for the building and use the eHUB as a hub for drone research.

All this and further information, explained in short introductory videos, is now available for seven selected emergenCITY demonstrators on the emergenCITY YouTube channel. There, the functions and application ideas of the various prototypes are explained in detail and the different demonstrators and their researchers are captured in action.

All videos are summarized in a playlist here.