International cooperation to strengthen resilience: IQIB contributes expertise in workshops and conferences.
Dr. Bert Droste-Franke at a workshop at waste management company AWB's environmental learning center “Umweltlernschule Plus” in Niederzissen.
IQIB
Flood disasters such as the one in the Ahr Valley in 2021 are a global concern– as illustrated not least by the flood disaster in the Valencia region in 2024. In order to develop effective solutions, stakeholders from science, business, and practice are therefore working closely together internationally. On the occasion of the 4th anniversary of the flood disaster in the Ahr Valley, Thinking Circular invited experts from Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands to participate in an excursion to the Ahr Valley with workshops and a conference – a good opportunity for us to disseminate the knowledge gained from the “Climate Adaptation, Flooding, Resilience” (KAHR) project and to present our further research results.
Panel at a conference on the Remagen campus, organized by Thinking Circular for the fourth anniversary of the flood disaster.
IQIB
Dr. Bert Droste-Franke, Head of “System Analysis & Societal Future Viability”, explained how badly critical infrastructure was damaged by the flood disaster, how long it took to restore, and how “Build Back Better” works in practice through a presentation with exciting examples: Although it took six months to completely restore the power supply in the Ahr Valley, temporary solutions were put in place within only a few days. The aim was to rebuild the destroyed infrastructure to be more resilient than before the flood disaster: transformers are now more resistant, cabling has been laid underground instead of overhead, and important supply stations have been built at higher elevations. The effective cooperation between the parties involved — THW, network operators, and municipal utilities — was particularly positive.
Many local communities in the Ahr Valley are taking advantage of the opportunity for a complete fresh start in restoring their heat supply by setting up district heating networks: Marienthal has been operating its own district heating network since November 2022, Rech has been supplied with “cold district heating” since March 2024, and Altenburg since September 2024.
„Four years after the flood disaster, reconstruction is still in full swing. We contribute to the improvement of disaster control with our expertise and work closely with local stakeholders – for example, within the framework of the regional disaster control network H-Kat-Net.“
Wigand Fleischer, Managing Director at IQIB
“Together with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the district of Ahrweiler, we continue to support the idea of establishing a resilience center (International Resilience Research Center @Ahr-Valley). A resilience center focusing on safety, disaster control, and resilience would make an important contribution to the national resilience strategy.”
Roman Noetzel, Managing Director at IQIB
The transfer of knowledge from the research project “Climate Adaptation, Flooding, Resilience” (KAHR) was the focus of a workshop facilitated by Dr Bert Droste-Franke together with Tanja Nietgen, researcher at IQIB, at the AWB's Umweltlernschule Plus (Environmental Learning School Plus) in Niederzissen. Through our role as project office in the project funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space (BMFTR), we have further expanded our scientific expertise on resilience and climate adaptation. We are now applying this expertise, for example, to support the activities of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) on-site as part of the RESITEK (Resilient Technologies for Disaster Control) project.
We are currently also supporting the regional disaster control network (H-Kat-Net) with our expertise. Together with actors from the emergency services (THW, fire department), the German Armed Forces, and civil protection, we are working to improve regional disaster management. In doing so, ideas and research results from science are taken up and put into concrete practice in exercises and operations.