Resilienz: dealing well with crises

The COVID-19 pandemic has hammered home the importance of resilience. Research has two jobs here: on the one hand, it has to quickly find answers to new challenges in cases of emergency – such as with the development of the coronavirus warning app; on the other hand, it needs to develop strategies to put businesses and society on a more resilient footing for future crises – for example, by making supply networks more stable and secure. We are working both of these angles with two corresponding concepts.

Friendly neighbors 2.0 – “INSELpro”

In the INSELpro consortium project, we are developing a digital service concept for a new kind of neighborhood assistance in urban areas. A neighborhood app that connects residents is being created for a Nuremberg city district.

The app puts people who need services in contact with people who provide them. It includes typical community services such as shopping, repairs, bureaucratic appointments, nursing/childcare and shared leisure activities. Users can take up offers and make offers themselves. We are developing the mediation back end, including an algorithm that enables optimized access and the straightforward placing and brokering of offers in real time within the app.

Resilient cash logistics: “BaSic” security concept for emergency and crisis cases

The intact circulation of cash is vitally important so that people can procure their basic needs. It could transpire, however, that various crisis situations disrupt this circulation and that the electronic means of payment so widely used today cease to work. This is precisely where the BaSic consortium project comes in.

For the first time, banks, trading companies, cash transport companies and research institutes are developing a holistic security concept that is designed for the long term and takes into account all the players involved and their needs.

For specific scenarios, our researchers define the optimum cash delivery by way of mathematical optimization. Not only do they indicate which data needs to be available for an optimization in the respective crisis situation, but they also calculate the optimum control of cash distribution based on cash withdrawal behavior in the crisis situation. This guarantees the availability of cash and transport resources in emergency situations on a supra-regional level.