Resilience for a World in Distress
Two FST Researchers at the ICRS
2023/10/04 by M. Lestáková
In recent years, the world was hit by several crises. Some were related to climate change, such as the floods in Pakistan, Germany and Greece, others to the Covid-19 pandemic or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, such as the energy crisis and inflation. One thing they have in common is that they are not standalone, but interlinked and can thus be described as complex crises.
These crises have impacted people and societies in the first place, but also technical systems such as infrastructure; as the two are strongly coupled in modern societies, we can speak of interconnected socio-technical systems. Studying such systems requires cross-disciplinary cooperation between researchers, policy-makers and resilience practitioners, and providing a platform for it was the aim of the 2023 International Conference on Resilient Systems which took place on 28 – 30 June 2023 in Mexico City.
Kevin T. Logan and Michaela Leštáková participated at the conference as members of the research area Urbanisation and Infrastructures at the Chair of Fluid Systems, which studies resilience of complex systems. Presenting research conducted within the LOEWE center emergenCITY, Kevin T. Logan showed how multi-agent systems can be used to control water distribution systems and improve their resilience with regard to communication failure preprint available. Michaela Leštáková presented the first outcomes of a review study on resilience metrics for water distribution systems (paper under review in Water Research; preprint available. Each of them has also chaired a session on Community Resilience and Institutional Resilience, respectively
