Chair of Fluid Systems at International Conference on Resilient Systems

Researchers at the Chair of Fluid Systems present their results at ICRS in Delft

2026/05/05 by Kevin Logan

The ICRS 2026 in Delft was themed as “Resilience in an Age of Disruption”. Three FST researchers presented their work on resilience of sociotechnical water distribution systems.

Bild 1: Jonathan Sattler shows his approach for statistical modelling of water demand

Bild 2: Michaela Leštáková presents her observability-based metric for monitoring water distribution networks

Bild 3: Kevin Logan demonstrates the impact consumers have on the resilience of technical water distribution systems

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How can technical systems be designed to ensure they fulfil their functionality even when faced with critical events? Which technical and which administrative and political approaches are necessary for enabling society and communities to manage crises and catastrophes as well as recovering from them in a timely manner?

These and further related questions drive the research of a growing scientific community, which met in March at the International Conference on Resilient Systems (ICRS), hosted by TU Delft.

The Chair of Fluid Systems was represented by Michaela Leštáková, Kevin Logan and Jonathan Sattler, who presented their research on the resilience of water distribution systems. In his presentation, Jonathan Sattler showed his approach for statistical modelling of water demand. Michaela Leštáková presented a new metric for assessing how well different water network topologies allow the system to be monitored using the concept of observability from control theory. In two separate talks Kevin Logan layed out his experimental study of design and operation concepts for resilience of water distribution systems as well as the consumer impact on the resilience of the systems.

Since 2019 ICRS has been a central forum for scientists of a multitude of disciplines and practitioners to discuss their findings in the study and implementation of resilience in sociotechnical systems. The Chair of Fluid Systems has been represented at the conference from the start with its focus on resilience of urban water distribution systems, which is currently conducted within the LOEWE center emergenCITY. Since the DeSIRE workshop of the Dutch resilience engineering community in 2022 and the ICRS in Mexico City in 2023, cooperation has been intensified leading to TU Darmstadt and emergenCITY joining 4TU.ResilienceEngineering, FRS Center of ETH Zürich, DLR and other partners as co-organisers of the conference. That’s why we greatly enjoyed the return to Delft, but are also looking forward to the next ICRS, to be held in September 2027 in Darmstadt.