RESIBES - Disaster-resilience by helper networks for emergency response

The overall objective of the project RESIBES is to increase community resilience by involving private persons, nonprofit associations or companies in a coordinated crisis response. For this purpose RESIBES investigates how to establish helper networks prior to eventual disasters and how to make use of the human and material resources provided by these networks and eventual additional spontaneous helpers in crisis response.

The project deals with social aspects like motivating helpers, commitment of helpers or cooperation between helpers and crisis response organizations as well as with technology research and development. This covers for instance, services supporting the efficient coordination of human and material resources provided by the helper network. Furthermore, services will be provided for gathering information from mobile devices and sensors via crowdsourcing mechanisms as well as services for evaluating and preparing the information with help of a geographical information system in order to support the decision making in critical situations. Mobile ad hoc networks and a distributed service platform based on the available mobile devices of helpers will support a resilient provision of the services even if the public infrastructure like cellular networks (partly) fails.

The project is funded by the Federal Government's "Research for civil security 2012-2017" framework programme as part of the field "Increasing resilience in crises and disasters" of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Project funded by: BMBF
Project duration: 02/2016 - 04/2019
Associated Partners: Deutsches Rotes Kreuz - Frankfurt am Main, Atos Information Technology GmbH, mainis IT-Service GmbH, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau, C-LAB and Heinz-Nixdorf Institute - Paderborn University
Contact: Jan Taschner, Atos Information Technology GmbH - C-LAB; Dr. Bernd Kleinjohann, Paderborn University - C-LAB
Project Homepage: Resibes