The Hessian Ministry of Science and Art (HMWK) has modelled a virtual interactive image of the emergenCITY eHUB as part of the “Science Spaces 3D” series in the context of the campaign “Hessen schafft Wissen”. eHUB, the former Solar Decathlon house, is located on the Lichtwiese campus of the TU Darmstadt and serves an interdisciplinary team of emergenCITY researchers as a demonstrator. It provides for a local hub that can maintain important energy and communication functions in emergency operation at short notice in the event of a crisis: The researchers are working on a smart home speaker system, a digital information board, charging and communicating with UAVs (Unmanned aerial vehicles), among other things.

All these functions can now be explored digitally rather than just on site. In a realistic 3D replica of the eHUB, interested visitors can view the interior and an exterior view of the building in a photo-realistic representation and move through and around the building at the click of a mouse. Various icons list and explain the functions and research approaches at the building. In this way, a virtual tour makes it clear how precisely the emergenCITY researchers in the emergenCITY mission eHUB are working to prepare the population of a city for a long-lasting, supra-regional power blackout and to and to mitigate its effects.

The virtual tour of the eHUB is available here as well as in a video version on youtube. Furthermore, the campaign published a three-part article on the research in the eHUB. The first part can be found here.