Cooperation with companies and industry associations

• CarByte Technology Group GmbH
• Deloitte GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft
• Deutsche Telekom MMS GmbH
• Ernst & Young GmbH
• 4flow SE
• Lebensmittelverband Deutschland e. V.
• List AG
• plasmotion GmbH
• Robert Bosch GmbH
• SAP Deutschland SE & Co.V.
• List AG
• plasmotion GmbH
• Robert Bosch GmbH
• SAP Deutschland SE & Co. KG
• Schwarz-Gruppe GmbH
• Wirtschaftsförderung Sachsen GmbH

Cooperation with authorities

• Bavarian State Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Tourism (StMELF)
• Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK)
• Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE)
• German Federal Bank
• Ministry of Food, Rural Areas and Consumer Protection Baden-Württemberg (MLR)
• Saxon State Ministry for the Environment and Agriculture (SMUL)

Cooperation with national and international research centres, universities and universities of applied sciences

• Bergische Universität Wuppertal (BUW)
• Forschungszentrum Informatik (FIZ)
• Fraunhofer EMI, Fraunhofer IOSB, Fraunhofer IVV
• Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Dresden (HTWD)
• Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)
• MINES ParisTech [France]
• Technische Universität Chemnitz (TUC)
• Technische Universität Dresden (TUD)
• Universität der Bundeswehr München (UniBW)
• Université Paris Dauphine [France]
• Universiteit Hasselt [Belgium]
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) [USA]
• Westfälische Hochschule (WH)
• Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania [USA]
• Xi'an University of Technology [China]

As part of the federally funded research projects SEAK, NOLAN and ALANO, our research on public-private collaboration in crisis management (PPEC: Public Private Emergency Collaboration) has made a lasting contribution to improving public crisis management, especially emergency food preparedness. The issues investigated are once again particularly relevant in the context of civil defence and will remain an important research focus of the Chair in the future.

In this short interview with Deutschlandfunk, Marcus Wiens explains selected solutions from the BMBF-funded NOLAN research project. One of the key recommendations from the project is the reform of the storage of essential goods for emergencies, namely the integration of state storage into the structures of commercial retail. A further recommendation, that the organisation of emergency stockpiling should also be based on international examples such as Switzerland and Finland in particular, was examined in greater depth in the NOLAN follow-up project ALANO. The follow-up project was initiated by NOLAN stakeholders, carried out by KIT and supported by the chair holder in an advisory capacity.

In June 2023, Marcus Wiens was invited as an expert to the Symposium "Secure cash supply - even in times of crisis" organised by the Deutsche Bundesbank in Berlin. In his keynote speech, he outlined scenarios in which the failure of payment transactions can lead to supply bottlenecks for essential goods and named options for bridging the problem over time. The expected reaction of retailers in such a case in the form of an uncoordinated extension of payment terms can also quickly have a counterproductive effect on the actual supply if this measure disrupts the synchronisation of supply chains. In the subsequent discussion round, the requirements for functioning cash logistics in an emergency (in particular the complex coordination between the supply of money and goods) were discussed.

Crises do not stop at national borders, but unfortunately national crisis management does!

Researching and improving cross-border emergency measures and the risk behaviour of the population in border regions affected by crises (e.g. natural disasters) is an important focus of our scientific work. Together with project and research partners (especially strong Franco-German cooperation), we exchange expertise with practice partners and international research networks and also provide advice in this area throughout the EU.

For the period 2023-2025, Marcus Wiens was a member of the Advisory Board in the European Horizon Project RED ROSES - Responsive, Data Ecosystem for Resilient and Operational Security Strategies (Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network). The project focussed on the prevention of natural hazards and preparedness in the French-Italian border region. Specifically, a tool for accelerated data and information exchange for cross-border authorities and civil protection actors was developed, tested and used to combat the risks of floods, landslides and forest fires. The interoperable and modular spatial data infrastructure (SDI) not only makes it possible to catalogue the persistent natural risks in this cross-border area and visualise them via a geoportal, but also helps the competent authorities to make decisions in the face of disaster risks via a decision support system.

In May 2022, Marcus Wiens presented the Whitepaper on Transboundary Resilience at the Public Safety Communication Europe (PSCE) Conference in Salzburg. A total of six co-authors (Monika Buscher, Anouck Adrot, Miriam Klein, Yannic Schulte, Eric Rigaud and Frank Fiedrich) contributed to the white paper, a team that brings together many years of experience in resilience research, particularly in the field of transboundary resilience. The white paper outlines first steps in the important - and in our view inevitable - direction of deeper, smarter and more scaled international cooperation.

Between 2023-2024, the Journal of Homeland Security gave us the opportunity to contribute a special issue on this important topic.

On 2 April 2025, the Chair of Innovation and Risk Management, in cooperation with TUBAF's Information Security Officer Dr Felix Eckhofer and colleagues from the Faculty of Mathematics & Computer Science, Prof. Dr Bernhard Jung and Prof. Dr Bastian Pfleging, held the first Cyber Awareness Day at our university!

We received a lot of positive feedback, helpful recommendations for the next event and once again realised how important it is to engage directly with members of the university.

If just a small proportion of the interested university public took something away from the event and feel able to deal with cyber risks more confidently, then we are very pleased. After all, we are all affected by cyber risks and are all in the same boat, so to speak!

For further, very useful information on the topic, please visit the page of the TUBAF information security officer.

Thank you once again to the co-initiators and co-organisers of TUBAF and to our cooperation partners from SECUSO and KASTEL of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)!