Fraunhofer INT

Brief Biography of Organisation:

The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, headquartered in Germany, is the world’s leading applied research organization. With its focus on developing key technologies that are vital for the future and enabling the commercial exploitation of this work by business and industry, Fraunhofer plays a central role in the innovation process. As a pioneer and catalyst for groundbreaking developments and scientific excellence, Fraunhofer helps shape society now and in the future. Founded in 1949, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft currently operates 74 institutes and research institutions throughout Germany. The majority of the organization’s 28,000 employees are qualified scientists and engineers, who work with an annual research budget of 2.8 billion euros. Of this sum, 2.3 billion euros is generated through contract research.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Technological Trend Analysis (INT) creates and continually updates a comprehensive overview of (i) the security and defence related Research and Technology (R&T) landscape and of the entire spectrum of technological developments, nationally and internationally, and (ii) the operational and policy background related to R&T demand of defence and security actors. INT consolidates the overview with its own specialized forecasts of technological developments as well as methodologies that support national & international research and organizational planning and innovation processes. In this context, INT’s Unit for Public Technology and Innovation Planning (TIP) has specialised in the disaster risk management (DRM) context. Despite the analysis of political, legal and organisational aspects facilitating DRM, it has facilitated technological and organisational review processes aiming at capability gap identification and the development of roadmaps for improving civil protection capabilities and increasing resilience in a broad variety of projects such as the FP 7 projects ACRIMAS (Aftermath Crisis Management System-of-systems Demonstration Phase I) and DRIVER (Driving Innovation in Crisis Management for European Resilience) or the Horizon 2020 projects Smart Resilience, FIRE-IN (Fire and Rescue Innovation Network and IN-PREP (Integrated tools for response planning and scenario building). TIP furthermore contributes to the implementation of the Peer Review Programme in the framework of EU cooperation on civil protection and disaster risk management for DG ECHO.

INT also works with individual Civil Protection actors for capability development and is – for more than 40 years – involved with the German Federal Ministry of Defence’s armaments planning process.