DiRect (HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF): Digitally-enhanced resilience of critical transport infrastructure

Industrial partners: Fraunhofer EMI & OSMOS Group

DiRect will facilitate infrastructure digitalisation and data driven resilience modelling.

DiRect will establish a streamlined, openly available, web-based toolkit for the integrated use of emerging advanced technologies towards urgently needed recovery models and adaptation paths to incentivize civil infrastructure resilience against multiple natural hazards exacerbated by climate change. This original approach of resilience will transform current approaches and strategies for monitoring infrastructure, by integrating heterogeneous data into model updating for achieving reliable and swift assessments. Advanced numerical modelling, fragility and recovery model development, as well as in applications of Geographic Information Systems GIS, Remote Sensing and Infrastructure Monitoring, the research output of DiRect will be calibrated based on a carefully selected case study, involving the performance and recovery of representative critical infrastructure in the recently devastated Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler region of Germany, following the pivotal flooding event of July 2021. The proposed toolkit can be used by public-and-private sector stakeholders for rapid decision-making and risk-informed management of similar critical infrastructure systems exposed to multiple natural hazards.

Fig. 1. Climate resilience of infrastructure enhanced by emerging digital technologies versus traditional management using conventional approaches (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2021.100387)