The aim of the overall project "Resilience and Evacuation Planning for Socio-Economic Infrastructures in a Medico-Social Context   (RESIK)" is to establish and ensure the efficient, continuous and essential functioning of hospitals (in the sense of business continuity management) in a crisis situation both on site and in an evacuation situation with the support of decentralised medical care and support structures. The RESIK network is coordinated by the Disaster Research Unit.

The sub-project of the Disaster Research Centre "Resilience and evacuation of facilities with special requirements (RESCUE)" pursues the overarching goal of identifying potentials for strengthening the resilience of critical infrastructures (KRITIS) using the example of hospitals and reducing their susceptibility to disruptions in regular operations in order to avert or minimise damage to life and limb.

In this sub-project, the hospital represents a junction in an overly complex network: The functionality of the hospital depends in many different ways on processes outside the institution, while at the same time providing essential services for society. Accordingly, the resilience of the hospital as well as the resilience of society and linked infrastructures must be understood in respect to this interdependence. A social science approach enables this perspective because it allows the inclusion of qualitative requirements that are interpreted differently by different actors.

In the first phase of the DRU subproject, application-oriented basic research will therefore be conducted on hospitals as KRITIS and their significance for other social processes. In the second phase, the insights gained will be transferred to other institutions, scenarios and cultural contexts.

The project network will develop concrete recommendations for action and concepts on the basis of a comprehensive risk analysis in order to maintain functionality in the event of a crisis. Solutions for the evacuation and temporary care of patients will be developed both in decentralised outpatient health care facilities and in emergency facilities, such as schools. While doing so, the focus is on the overarching cooperation of all actors, such as hospital staff, authorities, aid organisations and health care institutions. The measures will be developed in a practice-oriented manner on the basis of a model hospital in Krefeld and will be comprehensively evaluated in the course of a command post exercises. The DRU will focus in particular on psychological, social and ethical aspects of the evacuation situation.