Press Release 055/2011

Support of Decision-makers in Disaster Management

KIT and Fraunhofer Institute Agree on Strategic Partnership
Wenn die Stromversorgung ausfällt, müssen Katastrophenschützer schnell und fundiert entscheiden können. KIT und Fraunhofer IOSB helfen ihnen. (Foto: EnBW)
If power supply fails, disaster managers have to decide rapidly and in a well-founded manner. KIT and Fraunhofer IOSB support them. (Photo: dpa)

The KIT Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology (CEDIM) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, Systems Technology, and Image Evaluation (IOSB) have agreed on a strategic partnership in the next years. Among others, they plan to develop a system to support decision-makers in disaster management when power supply or traffic break down.

Central research areas of the Fraunhofer IOSB are information and knowledge management, image-based object recognition, and control and interaction systems. CEDIM focuses on risk acquisition, early warning, real-time prognosis, and risk management in case of natural disasters. “These profiles complement each other in a unique way,” says Professor Friedemann Wenzel, spokesman of CEDIM and professor at KIT’s Geophysical Institute. Professor Jürgen Beyerer, Managing Director of the Fraunhofer IOSB and holder of the KIT Chair of Interactive Real-time Systems, is convinced “that the synergies resulting from the cooperation of IOSB and CEDIM will lead to new developments in early warning and the design of decision support systems.”

Within their strategic partnership, CEDIM and Fraunhofer IOSB will pursue two activities: They conceived the “KRITIS” research project on the safety of critical infrastructures and have been working on it jointly since late 2010. It is aimed at developing a system to support decision-makers in disaster management in municipalities, districts, and federal states when power supply or traffic break down.

Moreover, CEDIM supports the organization of the 2013 ISCRAM Conference. The respective competition was won by KIT together with Fraunhofer IOSB. ISCRAM is the International Community on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management and stands for high-quality international conferences. The conference will take place from May 12 to 15, 2013, in Baden-Baden and Karlsruhe and will be chaired by Professor Beyerer.

The Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology (CEDIM) of the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam German Research Centre for Geosciences - GFZ and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is an interdisciplinary research center in the field of disaster management. With its help, natural and anthropogenic risks shall be understood better and identified earlier and disaster management shall be improved. More than 30 scientists from more than 15 GFZ and KIT institutes work on individual projects.

According to a recommendation made by the German Council of Science and Humanities in 2007, the new Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, Systems Technology, and Image Evaluation IOSB with offices in Karlsruhe and Ettlingen was established on January 01, 2010 by a merger of the FGAN Institute for Optronics and Pattern Recognition FOM, Ettlingen, and the Fraunhofer Institute for Information and Data Processing IITB.

 

 

Being “The Research University in the Helmholtz Association”, KIT creates and imparts knowledge for the society and the environment. It is the objective to make significant contributions to the global challenges in the fields of energy, mobility, and information. For this, about 9,800 employees cooperate in a broad range of disciplines in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. KIT prepares its 22,300 students for responsible tasks in society, industry, and science by offering research-based study programs. Innovation efforts at KIT build a bridge between important scientific findings and their application for the benefit of society, economic prosperity, and the preservation of our natural basis of life. KIT is one of the German universities of excellence.

ele, 30.03.2011
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Klaus Rümmele
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