On the way to a resilient city

In several projects, Fraunhofer EMI is researching the vulnerability of buildings and structural infrastructures to flood events in order to identify causes of failure, quantify possible damage probabilities and qualify improvement measures. The overarching goal is to strengthen the resilience of urban structures.

The central element is the development of generic building models. These are simplified mathematical models that take into account the typical characteristics of buildings in terms of their structure, materials and construction. These models represent a wide range of building types and can be used to assess the vulnerability of a large number of buildings to flooding without the need for specific data for each individual building. Probabilistic analyses of generic building models are based on the use of probability distributions for different parameters, such as the height of the flood or strength values of the construction materials. By combining these probability distributions, statistical statements about the probability of damage and risks can be derived.