Expected start date:

2016•06•01

Expected end date:

2019•12•31

Institute:

UNU-EHS

Project Status:

Closed

Project Type:

Research

Project Manager :

Simone Sandholz

Critical infrastructures — such as electricity, telecommunications, transportation, and water supply —play a key role in determining a society’s vulnerability to natural hazards. the KIRMin project analyses interdependencies between essential pillars of critical infrastructure supply. By assessing and determining what levels of critical services societies need to survive and thrive in the aftermath of natural hazard events KIRMin goes beyond so far predominantly technical approaches of managing critical infrastructures and infrastructure outages.

A particular focus is on understanding variances in the minimum supply requirements of different social groups and other infrastructure elements. By means of a household survey and expert interviews with actors involved in disaster and crisis management potential gaps between advised and actual private supplies as well as significant differences between socio-spatial groups will be assessed. In addition, the project also aims to:

mainstream minimum supply concepts into risk and crisis management principles;
assess dependencies and vulnerabilities regarding power and water supply;
assess the effectiveness of preventive measures for risk management and risk reduction in technical and socio-cultural terms;
establish an evaluation system for dealing with infrastructure failures based on “best and worst practices”,
strenghtening the social perspective of resiliene building by consideration of societal change and informal actors in civil protection and critical infrastructure management.

The results will inform the development of minimum supply standards and a guideline on integrated risk management in civil protection, designed in collaboration with partners from TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences, the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK), the University of Stuttgart, and associated partners. With financial support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the project’s empirical pilot areas are two municipalities in Germany: the city of Cologne and the municipality of Rhein-Erft.