Knowledge Transfer Projects
Our knowledge transfer projects deliver sound knowledge and customized information to public authorities, companies and the general public.
Projects
The knowledge transfer projects fund and support demand-oriented knowledge transfer activities at the centers, which in their entirety strengthen both our bidirectional exchange with society as well as the unidirectional transfer of knowledge to a target group.
In doing so, they stand out from the centers' existing activities and take on a lighthouse character within the community. A consolidation of the projects after the end of the funding period ensures a long-term added value for society.
Current Projects
-
Health information must be communicated as easily accessible as possible and via different formats in order to address the target groups as broadly as possible. Using the example of genetic and lifestyle-related cancer risks, an online dialog platform with live chat is being developed, tested and implemented in the project "Cancer Prevention in Dialog". The aim is to provide individual information and advice to people seeking council with questions about their family's cancer risk and to promote suitable coping strategies by qualified physicians from the Cancer Information Service. The service is being developed in a participatory manner together with self-help representatives. The accompanying communication research by project partners from Hanover and Bielefeld provides valuable insights into how knowledge about cancer risks that is relevant to decision-making and action can be prepared in a way that is appropriate to the target group and optimally communicated via the live chat. From this, recommendations for action to promote health literacy and empowerment of different target groups are derived. Once established, the digital online dialog platform with live chat will feed directly into the outreach activities of the National Cancer Prevention Center and the National Decade Against Cancer.
The project first identified needs, requirements, and challenges for chat use with focus groups, in individual interviews, and with the help of an online survey of a larger sample. Based on the findings, the online dialogue platform is currently being set up. The necessary content on family and lifestyle-related cancer risks and associated diverse inquiry scenarios are already available; the chat team has also been trained for this particular dialogue-oriented communication. During the trial phase, representatives of the BRCA network, plant carriers from focus groups, and volunteers from the general public acted as dialogue partners. This trial phase is being scientifically monitored using qualitative methods. The service is scheduled to go live in the summer of 2023.
Further information
-
Experience with the droughts of 2018-19 - which resulted in large-scale dieback of spruce and massive damage to many tree species - shows that the instruments currently used are not sufficient for efficient risk management of German forests. The basis for foresighted risk management is efficient and flexible damage monitoring in order to be able to react appropriately and promptly to the state of the forest.
Currently, state ministries survey the damage situation inconsistently and with a considerable time delay for a small percentage of the area. Therefore, standardized, area-wide, and timely products for an operational forest condition monitor will be developed here based on time series of remote sensing data (BigData) and AI-based methods. Stakeholder requirements diverge in terms of temporal resolution - early detection of damage versus annual products. Common is the interest in area-wide information on tree species distribution and an information system.
The products are to be optimized and made accessible iteratively over the project duration in interaction with stakeholders. In addition, hydrological modeling can be used to estimate short-term and seasonal water availability for forest stands. Ecological models can be used to predict long-term tree species distribution. Such a system has not yet been developed anywhere else in the world.
Further information
-
Especially in times of climate change and the increase of extreme events, the provision of robust water balance information is extremely important in order to be able to both react to crises (e.g. droughts) and take precautions (e.g. future investments and climate adaptation). From this derives the need to develop a national water resources information system WIS-D, with monitoring, forecasting, and climate impact components. This will provide a sound basis for action by companies and authorities in the water sector in extreme situations (e.g. extreme drought, sinking groundwater levels, low water levels in surface waters).
Such an information system will make the daily updated status of water availability on the land surface, in the soil at different depths, in groundwater and in surface waters spatially and temporally highly resolved available in 24/7 continuous operation to support short-term management. In addition, WIS-D will include a globally unique sub-seasonal forecast component with 46 days of foresight as well as long-term climate impacts from the Helmholtz Climate Initiative HI-CAM, among others. Here, WIS-D will be able to offer a new quality in terms of robust forecasts, which will also provide the uncertainty of the results.
Further information
Completed Projects
-
The ADAPTER project (ADAPT tERrestrial systems) provides innovative, simulation-based products for optimal adaptation to short-term weather variability and weather extremes as well as to long-term regional climate change in intensive dialog with key partners and practitioners from agriculture. In addition to economic conditions, these are the primary factors influencing agricultural production and productivity. The overall goal of ADAPTER is to provide a broader information base for agriculture, enabling better informed decisions, as a contribution to a more sustainable, weather- and climate-resilient agriculture.
On the ADAPTER product platform, daily forecast products with high spatial resolution on the water cycle over Germany and neighboring regions are made freely available, as well as observation data from a monitoring network established with local farmers, comprehensive evaluation products on past and future climate in Germany, including special analyses relevant to agriculture, and a drought dossier. Information on plant-available water, as one of the prediction products from ADAPTER, will be made available to a broad interested public via a responsive website, along with explanatory information.
Further information
- www.adapter-projekt.de (GER only)
- www.wasser-monitor.de (GER only)
-
Cancer and diabetes are among the top common diseases. Yet studies show: Many people are unaware of the importance of prevention and early detection. The "Fit for Health" project aims to provide pupils with the necessary in-depth knowledge and strengthen their health literacy. With the involvement of teachers - as the central mediator - Helmholtz Munich and the German Cancer Research Center have developed innovative teaching materials for use in general and vocational schools. Topics include the mechanisms of development, the possibilities for prevention and early detection, and the treatment of cancer and diabetes. Overarching themes such as the concepts of health and disease, the structures of the healthcare system and the teaching of media skills in dealing with health information are also suitable for interdisciplinary teaching. There are currently more than 50 teaching materials on cancer and diabetes, ranging from interactive learning modules and explanatory videos to classic work materials for printing out. All of them use innovative didactic methods and their content is scientifically based. These materials for students are supplemented by readers with background information for teachers. Further training courses have also been developed for this target group: due to Corona, they were held almost exclusively online and had already reached over 2,000 teachers by the end of 2022.
Since fall 2022, the study "Förderung des gesundheitsförderlichen Wissens und der digitalen Gesundheitskompetenz von Schülerinnen und Schülern (geWiss)" in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, and Rhineland-Palatinate has been examining whether the teaching materials sustainably improve health-relevant knowledge and the health literacy of children and young people. As early as 2021, the first e-learning offerings on diabetes within "Fit in Gesundheitsfragen" received the bytes4diabetes Award and the Commenius EuMedia Medal for outstanding educational media from the Society for Education, Information and Media.
Further information
-
The way we use energy has a major impact on the prosperity of current and future generations. Changing the energy system is a task for society as a whole, involving a wide variety of players. These range from interested citizens to public administration and the local energy industry. Against this background, the project "Energy Transition in Dialog" was carried out from 2018 to 2022. KIT scientists developed a variety of participation and knowledge transfer formats in order to talk about the sustainable design of the energy transition, to advance it, and to strengthen the solidarity between science and society.
The project team published explanatory videos on the energy transition and sustainability issues and presented energy contexts in an understandable way on its own social media channels. The project also offered "sustainable energy tours" through Karlsruhe's Oststadt district. Last but not least, the future of the energy system was focused on in various workshops. In this context, social learning processes were also initiated, for example with the city of Karlsruhe, the Turkish-speaking community, young climate protectors and interdisciplinary researchers. Public interventions, such as the installation of a solar room in parking lots, were as much a part of the project's daily routine as the work with students. Last but not least, a total of 22 households in Karlsruhe received solar balcony systems and were scientifically accompanied for a year.An important building block for the success of the project was the close connection to the Karlsruhe Reallabor activities. The project team played a major role in the establishment of the "Karlsruher Transformationszentrum für Nachhaltigkeit und Kulturwandel" (KAT), which has been established at the Institute of Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at KIT since February 2022.
Further information
-
With its participatory dialogue-oriented consulting approach, our project INTERNAS aims to better prepare international assessments and their scientific results as well as their political significance for national policy consulting in order to make them more usable and applicable.
For this purpose, a standardized process of transferring international assessments into the German policy context is to be carried out with the involvement of relevant stakeholders and established as a uniform process initiated by Helmholtz. Furthermore, by establishing these transfer processes, the participation of scientists in international assessments becomes visible, which underlines the added value and discoverability of (Helmholtz) research on a national level.Furthermore, the process is analyzed by active accompanying research. Among other things, it is supported by the creation of digital knowledge representations (ontologies), which locate the scientific outputs on the 'SDG roadmap' in the national context. This unfolds further interfaces through which new ideas from (Helmholtz) research can be introduced into the relevant policy debates. By applying ontologies, a central contribution to the development of measurable and presentable criteria and indicators for good transfer processes can thus be developed, which can be applied far beyond Helmholtz.
Further information
-
A prerequisite for the safety of visitors to major events is the reliable forecasting and holistic consideration of all traffic flows. In practice, however, this has not been the norm to date: Although event organizers are increasingly commissioning traffic simulations to prove safety, the quality of the tools used and the validity of their results are doubtful. In addition, the employees of the commissioned planning offices and the reviewing officials in the approval authorities are generally not sufficiently qualified to check the plausibility of the simulation results. Both lead to the fact that they often have to blindly trust the results of questionable black-box simulations - with far-reaching consequences for the safety of visitors.
The project partners have started to improve this situation in two areas: the simulation tool and the qualification of its users. The Helmholtz centers involved in the project have been working intensively for more than ten years on improving simulation tools for pedestrian and vehicle traffic. For pedestrian traffic, the simulation tool "JuPedSim" developed at FZJ is available. Urban traffic can be simulated with the software "SUMO" developed at DLR. Within the framework of the project, an intersection between the two programs was created so that a holistic view of all traffic flows at an event is thus made possible.
At the same time, the project partners, in cooperation with the Bundesakademie für Bevölkerungsschutz und Zivile Verteidigung (BABZ) and theInternationalen Bildungs- und Trainingszentrum für Veranstaltungssicherheit (IBIT), iteratively developed and evaluated a curriculum for a training course lasting several days. The training concept aims to provide a wide variety of stakeholders in the event industry with confidence in commissioning and evaluating simulations for large-scale events. The training was aimed at a broad target group - the participants included representatives of event organizers, operators, security/technical planners, police, regulatory authorities and many more. The training courses enabled the participants to critically review the (traffic) planning of major events with the help of simulations, with the aim of identifying and avoiding safety deficits at an early stage.The project now runs under the title "SISAME" (SImulations for SAfety at Major Events).
Further information
- www.sisame.de (GER only)
-
Through the European Earth observation program Copernicus, high-resolution, multispectral remote sensing data from the Sentinel-2 satellites have been available since 2015. These free satellite data provide up-to-date areal environmental information with the potential to support decision-making processes in diverse fields of application. For example, agricultural production processes can be optimized, the condition and changes of hard-to-access nature reserves can be recorded, or water quality and quantity can be monitored. Yet the use of these data is poorly integrated into everyday work and decision-making processes among non-scientific audiences because neither access to nor use of the data is self-explanatory or intuitive. Tutorials, instructions, and training are generally at the scientific level and often only available in English.
To close this gap between users and science, low-threshold digital training courses for non-scientific target groups were developed in the context of SAPIENS (Satellite Data for Planning, Industry, Energy and Nature Conservation), in which the potential of satellite-based Earth observation for a wide variety of civilian application fields was demonstrated. In close exchange with representatives of relevant target groups (e.g. public administration, environmental foundations, agriculture and forestry), four application-oriented and interactive training modules were developed in which the 15 to 18 participants in each module worked not only theoretically but also practically with satellite data.
Within the framework of SAPIENS, 16 training courses (four training courses per module) were successfully conducted with a total of 321 participants. In addition, two exclusive SAPIENS workshops were offered for NABU with 27 participants. The SAPIENS training program was very well received and all training dates were fully booked. We were able to achieve a satisfaction rate of 98%.
In September 2021, the dedicated FERN.Lern website for remote sensing teaching projects at GFZ was published. In addition to SAPIENS as a lighthouse project, other remote sensing knowledge transfer projects are also placed here to present the GFZ's continuing education competencies to the outside world in a bundled way. All SAPIENS teaching materials (videos, manual, tutorials) are freely accessible and available here. In addition, SAPIENS gave rise to the central service & consulting center GFZ.Learn for all GFZ researchers for the creation of (digital) continuing education offerings for non-scientific target groups. This central office builds on the didactic and media competencies created within SAPIENS. They are now intended to provide added value for all of the Center's research foci.
Further information
- https://www.gfz-potsdam.de/en/about-us/education-and-training/sapiens
- https://fernlern.gfz-potsdam.de (GER only)
-
The project has since been consolidated and can therefore also be found here.
For the energy transition to succeed and the ambitious climate targets to be achieved, the building stock must be designed to be almost climate-neutral by 2050. To this end, the surfaces of buildings offer large and untapped potential that can be activated and used for decentralized power generation with photovoltaics. This applies to both new buildings and existing buildings. As a bridge between the construction industry and photovoltaics, the Consulting Office for Building-Integrated Photovoltaics, BAIP, has been imparting comprehensive knowledge to architects, planners, those responsible for construction, investors and urban developers since 2019. Topics include available technologies, design options, products, technical feasibility, and legal frameworks. With an experienced team, BAIP offers product-neutral, targeted and personal advice on the use of building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) and the activation of building surfaces. This team has meanwhile advised on more than 300 construction projects. This initial free advisory service lowers the barriers to the integrated use of photovoltaics and contributes to the widespread use of this technology.
At the same time, BAIP transfers knowledge in the form of further education, e.g. in the context of regular architect training courses, in the training of young professionals at the HTW Berlin (master's course in renewable energies) and the University of Kassel (courses in architecture and design), as well as in numerous round tables, e.g. on fire protection, monument protection and in specialist workshops, such as the Berlin Energy Days. Furthermore, BAIP is involved in the implementation of solar legislation and is a partner in the Berlin BAUinfo Center, among others.
BAIP is embedded in the HZB and thus close to research and development on photovoltaics. Its unique real laboratory for BIPV in Berlin-Adlershof with its solar façade serves as both a research and demonstration object. The scientists study the interactions between the solar façade and the actual building over a long period of time. At the same time, it provides experience from planning, construction and operation from the perspective of architecture and facility management.
Further information
