• Descriptive Study of the Agility and Resilience of the Canadian Humanitarian Aid Sector in the Time of COVID-19, Stéphanie Maltais
• Explaining Covid-19 crisis response strategies from a Resource Based View, Jeroen Wolbers, Sanneke Kuipers
• Crisis Management, Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Management in Dealing with the Migrant and Refugee Crisis 2015/16, Daniel F Lorenz, Cordula Dittmer
• What is trust in a pandemic? Exploring the role of trust in technology, data, and good governance as part of pandemic response, Katrina Petersen, Susannah Copson
• Organizational competences for innovation and resilience: Insights from a research project on crisis management during Covid19 in five European countries, Florian Roth, Thomas Jackwerth-Rice, Florian Neisser, Johannes Sautter, Benjamin Kaluza

Panel description

Like in a magnifying glass, the COVID-19 pandemic exposes significant weaknesses in current concepts and practices of disaster preparedness, prevention and response. Although it might be early to assess, there is a ‘window of opportunity’ for emergency and crisis management to use the experiences of the ongoing crisis to learn key lessons and adapt structures and processes accordingly to increase both organizational and systemic resilience (Boin et al. 2020; Collins et al., 2020). 

An important field of organisational learning relates to the competencies and cooperation between different organisations and across varying levels of administration, including innovation processes to improve exchange and interoperability (Berchtold et al. 2020; Roth and Prior 2016; Sautter et al. 2015). Previous research has shown how recent crisis experiences, including natural hazards, or social crises such as the European refugee crisis can function as a catalyst for organisational innovation and enable inter-crises learning processes in public administrations that reach beyond specific hazard types (Roth et al. 2018; Roth et al. 2019; Eckhard et al. 2020). In this session, we would like to shed some light on the impact of the pandemic at the level of national and sub-national administrations and response organisations, as well as the technological, organizational or social innovations that have been developed to increase responsive, adaptive or anticipatory capacities.  

The session encourages submissions on the topics of learning and innovation in pandemic preparedness and response, but also in disaster and emergency management more generally. Inter alia, submissions could highlight different levels and viewpoints, including the structures and processes to anticipate and respond to hazards (external view) as well as those to maintain operations (internal view). Possible guiding questions are:  

• What competences and capacities were already available before the COVID-19 crisis that proved valuable to facilitate cooperation?  
• What innovation and adaptation processes were helpful to meet the challenges of the pandemic? 
• What might be transferable to different future situations to improve organisational and systemic resilience?  
• What are lessons learned and good practices, and what can we do to use windows of opportunity to transfer these lessons into broader practice?

We explicitly encourage empirical examples from practice as well as theoretical or conceptual contributions. Insights from different national contexts, observations spanning over various administrative boundaries and comparisons of case studies are most welcome contributions. 

The panel will be organized as a conference track, where authors will present their work and have the chance to obtain constructive feedback from the group as a whole and from a designated discussant. 

Chairs:
Dr. Florian Roth – Fraunhofer ISI, Karlsruhe (Germany) 

Florian Roth works as a senior researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI. His research focuses on strategic measures to support innovation and transformation processes in support of socio-technical resilience. Before joining Fraunhofer, Florian was part of the 'Risk and Resilience Research Group’ at ETH Zürich, Switzerland. In several research projects with national and international partners, he has analysed the political, organizational and social dimensions of risk and vulnerability, and how to foster systemic resilience. 

Patrick Drews – Fraunhofer IAO, Stuttgart (Germany)
Patrick Drews is research fellow at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO, Stuttgart Business Unit Urban Data and Resilience since 2015. He studied Rescue Engineering at University of Applied Sciences Cologne and Public Management at University of Kassel. He was affiliated with several German federal and regional crisis management agencies where he served as a mission planner and technical advisor to the regional fire chief. His research interests are efficient crisis management processes. Patrick researches the integration of spontaneous volunteers into response and systematic exercise evaluation. He lives with his wife and son in Esslingen, Germany. Patrick also serves as a paramedic in the Esslingen county EMS and as a voluntary airborne rescue specialist at the mountain rescue service. 

Dr. Florian Neisser – Fraunhofer INT, Euskirchen (Germany) 

Florian Neisser is a Senior Researcher at Fraunhofer INT, Business Unit for Technology and Innovation Planning. He is an expert on Disaster Risk and Crisis Management including Critical Infrastructure Protection. He is the project manager for Fraunhofer INT within the Horizon 2020 project FIRE-IN (Fire and Rescue Innovation Network) and member of the KResCo project on crisis management and resilience during the Corona virus pandemic. In his current work he is focusing on capability-driven research and innovation including the identification of technical and non-technical solutions for an effective disaster risk management. Florian holds a PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) in Geography from the Faculty of Mathematics and Science of Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University Bonn, Germany. 

Johannes Sautter – Fraunhofer IAO, Stuttgart (Germany) 

Johannes Sautter is a senior researcher and consultant at Fraunhofer IAO, Business Unit Urban Data and Resilience. He received a Diploma degree in informatics at Ulm University and specialized on human-centered design and interactive systems. He entered the profession as a software engineer at a company for customized software developments. Since 2011, he worked as an applied researcher and usability and requirements manager in various international EU-research-projects coping with civil protection. Further, he initiated and developed a local regular event bringing together civil protection practitioners and deciders as well as researchers. Besides his current focus on data governance for research data and urban data, he is working on his PhD thesis in data-based quality management for mass casualty incidents (MCI). 

Dr. Benjamin Kaluza – Fraunhofer INT, Euskirchen (Germany) 

Dr. Benjamin Kaluza, is a senior scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Technological Trend Analysis with an academic background in biological science. He has experience in interdisciplinary and intercultural projects and previously worked in projects in Europe, SE Asia, Australia and South America. In the business unit for (Public) Technology- and Innovation Planning of Fraunhofer INT he supports innovation management in EU and national research projects. His current focus is on state-of-the-art analysis, end-user need/ and impact assessments in crisis management, particularly for pandemic preparedness. 

Dr. Thomas Jackwerth-Rice – Fraunhofer ISI, Karlsruhe (Germany) 

Since 2018, Thomas Jackwerth-Rice has been working as a project manager at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI.  Trained as an organizational sociologist at the University of Bamberg and Marne-la-Vallée Paris, he focuses on analysing the social mechanisms of corporate and societal transformation processes. In addition, he has extensive practical experience from accompanying change processes in various companies and received his doctorate from the University of Oldenburg in 2019. 

References:

Berchtold, C., Vollmer, M., Sendrowski, P.; Neisser, F.; Müller, L. & S. Grigoleit (2020). Barriers and Facilitators in Interorganizational Disaster Response: Identifying Examples Across Europe. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 11, 46–58 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-020-00249-y 

Boin, A.; Lodge, M.; Luesink, M. (2020). Learning from the COVID-19 crisis: an initial analysis of national responses. Policy Design and Practice 3(3), 189-204. 

Collins, A.; Florin, M.-V.; Renn, O. (2020). COVID-19 risk governance: drivers, responses and lessons to be learned. Journal of Risk Research 23(7-8), 1073-1082. 

Eckhard, S.; Lenz, A.; Seibel, W.; Roth, F.; Fatke, M. (2020). Latent Hybridity in Administrative Crisis Management: The German Refugee Crisis of 2015/16. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 1-18 https://academic.oup.com/jpart/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jopart/muaa039/5922017 

Prior, T.; Roth, F. (2016). Learning from Disaster Events and Exercises in Civil Protection Organizations, Risk & Resilience Report 2, Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zürich. http://www.css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/pdfs/RR-Report-2016-01 .pdf  

Roth, F.; Prior, T.; Käser, M. (2019). Natural Hazards Governance in Western Europe, in: Benouar, Djillali (ed.) Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Hazard Science, https://oxfordre.com/naturalhazardscience/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389407.001.0001/acrefore-9780199389407-e-225   

Roth, F.; Seibel, W.; Neuberger, L.; Fatke, M.; Eckhard, S.; Lenz, A. (2018). Understanding local crisis management in complex organisational settings. The case of the migration crisis in Germany 2015/16. Paper presented at the Third Northern European Conference on Emergency and Disaster Studies, Amsterdam, 23.03.2018. 

Sautter, Johannes; Havlik, Denis; Böspflug, Lars; Max, Matthias; Rannat, Kalev; Erlich, Marc; Engelbach, Wolf (2015): Simulation and Analysis of Mass Casualty Mission Tactics. In: International Journal of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management 7 (3), S. 16–39. http://DOI.org/10.4018/IJISCRAM.2015070102.