The project

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic presents itself not only as a medical-epidemiological research challenge but also as a comprehensive social experiment. Within a short period of time, the pandemic hit different countries and economic areas and a wave of individual and collective reactions was initiated.

The project "Crisis Management and Resilience - Corona" analyses the impact of the political decisions taken as countermeasures to the pandemic with regard to several societal systems: Economy and society, innovation, civil protection and emergency response and applied research. The developments and decisions taken in these societal areas in Germany are compared with those of other European and non-European countries.

To achieve this, several Fraunhofer Institutes are working with different perspectives and methods in the various work packages of the project. The work packages are characterised by the different combinations of the Fraunhofer Institutes in order to achieve the most holistic and new view possible through the diversity of perspectives, know-how and methods. Project partners are the Fraunhofer IRB, the Fraunhofer IMW, the Fraunhofer IAO and the Fraunhofer ISI with the Fraunhofer INT as overall coordinator. These institutes are also all in closely connected via the Fraunhofer Innovation Research Alliance.

Aim of the project

The aim of the project is to develop recommendations for action for decision-makers in the areas of politics, administration, business and application-oriented research. These recommendations can help improve crisis management for future pandemics and increase societal resilience.

Duration

The project has a runtime of one year and ends in November 2021.

How? 

The central starting point of the project are the political decisions made in different countries and their impact on the course of the pandemic. The selection of countries for the project was based on several criteria, in particular access to data and availablitiy of experts, the comparability of the countries with Germany, as well as country-specific characteristics or decisions made during the crisis (e.g. the herd immunisation approach of Sweden or Italy as the first European country with cases).

The collection of data is the first step of the project. Based on this empirical data, the impact of the decisions will be analysed with regard to the societal actors and systems:

• Economy and society 
• Innovation 
• Civil protection and emergency response 
• (applied) Research

Each of these areas will be examined in separate work packages. Within the framework of these thematically focussed work packages, additional system analysis-relevant data is collected, for example through interviews or the development of quantitative data. The findings are then translated into recommendations for action, which are compiled in a final work package and forwarded to relevant actors in the fields of politics, business, civil protection and application-oriented research. The specific goals of the individual topics, the institutes involved and the procedures of the individual work packages are presented in more detail here.