Completed Projects

Completed Projects

Here you can find in alphabetical order all completed BIGS research projects – more information on the individual projects can be found on the corresponding project pages.

AI Rescue

Rescue services in Germany are part of the health sector and are divided into emergency rescue and patient transport. As a task of organised non-police emergency response and public services, the optimal use of limited resources is imperative. Optimal functioning along the rescue chain is subject to many challenges. Artificial intelligence can help to prepare decisions and process the available data.

Airlift Capability during Catastrophes

From 2010 to 2011, this project investigated how suitable air transport capacities can be provided specifically for disaster situations. The focus was on a provisioning option that would mean the least possible intervention in the airfreight market, but at the same time a qualitative gain in comparison to the status quo.

Alfarabi

This project investigated how disinformation is reproduced on Twitter using quantitative and qualitative methods. The work focused on two case studies on Afghanistan and Lebanon respectively.

BASIC

The cash cycle must remain functional in the event of a crisis. BASIC developed a new security framework concept for this purpose. Together with relevant players such as the Deutsche Bundesbank, commercial banks, retailers and cash-in-transit companies, BIGS worked on strategies for maintaining the cash cycle in the event of a breakdown in electronic communications and under difficult conditions.

Between Two Worlds – Cybercrime between Risk and Reality

In this project, the BIGS examined 2013/14 the extent to which existing studies can be relied upon for the data basis. In the process, the existing literature was analyzed in detail and checked for validity. The aim of the project was to obtain an overview of the currently available information on the topic of cybercrime and, based on this, to make statements about its usability for companies and societies.

Centre for Excellence of Security and Technology

The “Centre of Excellence for Security and Technology” (07/2013-12/2016) aimed to pool the expertise in the German security sector and to improve the initial position of German enterprises (in particular SMEs) for participating in European security research projects. 

Comparing Whole of Government Approaches to Fragile States

Dealing successfully with fragile states and crisis situations requires the coordinated use of diplomatic, humanitarian, development and security measures. With such a networked approach (“whole of government approach"), donor countries like Germany aim to meet the complex and closely interlinked challenges that exist for development and security in fragile contexts as comprehensively and efficiently as possible. The research project “Networked Approaches to Dealing with Fragile States in International Comparison", which was carried out for one year in 2012 by BIGS on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), aimed to identify current examples and innovative solutions for the design and implementation of networked approaches to fragile states and to make them available for the German debate.

Creation of a Security Analysis for Potsdam

On behalf of the Brandenburg state capital Potsdam, BIGS worked together with the Neue Köhler Management Gesellschaft (NKMG) and the IABG to carry out a security analysis for Potsdam. Having already conducted several studies in Saxon municipalities, we conducted a citizen survey with subsequent analysis on behalf of the Office of Municipal Crime Prevention of the City of Potsdam.

CyberFactory#1

From December 2018 to June 2022 the ITEA-3 Project CyberFactory#1  (CF#1) aimed at designing, developing, integrating and demonstrating a set of key enabling capabilities to foster optimization and resilience of the Factories of the Future (FoF). BIGS was the leader of the task Impact Management and is within this task responsible for Community Management as well.

Fit4Sec/BERKoS

fit4sec was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the initiative “Deutsche Antragsteller fit für Europa”. The supportive action to “Building European Consortia for Security Research” served as a community and technological-information sharing platform, specifically affording German participants necessary coping mechanisms to better support quality end-user orientation in European security research (Horizon 2020 “Secure Societies”).

HERMENEUT - Enterprises’ Intangible Risks Management via Economic Models Based on Simulation of Modern Cyber-Attacks

Cyber attacks on companies are now part of everyday life. In this context, cyber risks are somewhat exaggerated, distinguishing only between those companies that have already been affected and those that have simply not yet registered it. However, the classic risk analysis and approach, which aims to protect and insure physical company assets, does not go far enough with cyber attacks. The focus of the EU Horizon 2020 research contribution of the BIGS in the HERMENEUT project, from 2016 to 2019, was the development of an econometric model, which is to serve companies as a basis for risk analysis and for the calculation and accounting of intangible assets in the course of a cyber attack.

Institutional and Organizational Aspects of Humanitarian Logistics

From 2010 to 2013, the project investigated how suitable air transport capacities can be provided specifically for disaster situations. The concept of jointly used transport capacities showed a clear allocation of competencies and resources. Using the instruments of the new institutional economics, recommendations for action for an efficient and more effective organisation of aid transport were developed. This would make it possible to have aircraft ready to meet the transport needs of aid organisations within a very short time. The resulting simplification of organisational and logistical planning for aid organisations allows for a more effective and efficient provision of real disaster relief on the ground.

Integration at Eye Level – Peer Mediation of Values for Refugees

The pilot project “Integration at eye level – Discourse on Values for refugees by refugees” was funded between September 2017 and December 2019 by the federal program “Live Democracy!” (Active Against Right-Wing Extremism, Violence and Xenophobia) program of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ). The project was developed in cooperation with the European Foundation for Democracy (EFD) and implemented by the Brandenburg Institute for Society and Security (BIGS).

IT Service Providers as Actors for Strengthening IT Security at SMEs in Germany

Together with Neue Köhler Managementgesellschaft (NKMG), BIGS was commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy (BMWi) in September 2019 to carry out a study on the topic of “IT Service Providers as Actors for Strengthening IT Security at SMEs in Germany". The HTW Berlin was commissioned as subcontractor to conduct qualitative and quantitative interviews with a selected number of IT service providers and SMEs. In a first step, BIGS prepared a market analysis which gives an overview of the relevant literature with reference to the supply and demand side of IT service providers with special regard to IT security.

Organizational Models for International Aid Transport

Despite all efforts, disasters – such as those in Pakistan and Haiti in 2010 and in Japan in 2011 – repeatedly bring to light the deficits in the organisation of international aid transport, not only at German and European level, but also at international level. Affected disaster areas are not or not sufficiently supplied for periods of weeks because funds have not yet been released, the disaster region cannot be reached or access to the region is not secure.

OSiMa - Organization and Regulation of the Civil Security Market in Germany

As part of the thematic area “Civil Security – New Economic Aspects" from the programme “Research for Civil Security 2012-2017", the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) funded the joint project “The Order of the Security Market" (OSiMa) from 2016 to 2019, with the Brandenburg Institute for Society and Security (BIGS) acting as consortium leader. The OSiMa consortium jointly and multidisciplinary analysed which forms of the good security exist and how they should be organised and financed. In particular, the aim was to show what contribution the private security industry can make from a regulatory point of view and to describe the framework within which new services and organisational forms of protection and security can be created by the security industry.

RiskViz – Providing a risk situation picture of industrial IT security in Germany

The project “Providing a risk situation picture of industrial IT security in Germany" (RiskViz) was funded by the German IT Security Research Program of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The overall aim of the consortium with seven partners from research, industry and practitioners was to improve the German economy’s IT security, in particular with regard to CI. Within the RiskViz  joined forces to develop methods and instruments to identify ICS that have insufficient protection against cyber-attacks. RiskViz aimed to create a search engine that is capable of finding ICS and of collecting relevant information about the system and its risk situation without interfering with its operations.

Security in Public Transportation

The number of violent incidents in local public transport in Germany has risen slightly in recent years.  There were no standardized requirements for security concepts of transport companies and infrastructure operators and there was no overall view of owners and users as well as contents and evaluation criteria of security-relevant data for public transport. In 2010, the Ministry of the Interior of the State of Brandenburg commissioned BIGS to conduct a preliminary study on safety in local public transport (ÖPNV).

SenSE4Metro – Safety Management and Emergency Response System for Subway Systems

In the two-year project “Safety management and emergency response system for underground railway systems" (SenSE4Metro) funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the safety of people in underground railway systems was increased by new technical and organisational measures.

The Hidden Cost of Untrusted Vendors in 5G Networks

5G is considered a transformative technology that will soon be the basis of a high increase in productivity. In the future, further services will emerge from this new generation of cellular systems due to increased capacity, high speeds and low latency. Many existing industries will digitalise an increasing share of their value chain and run production and services over these mobile networks, thereby making 5G networks a quasi-supercritical infrastructure. In this study, we reveal the hidden costs of these untrustworthy network vendors and, insofar as  possible, calculate the costs more precisely for four European countries (Germany, France, Italy, and Portugal).

The Use of UAS for Civilian Missions

After the severe earthquake in Japan in March 2011, they were the first to provide images from inside the destroyed reactor blocks of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – also known in the technical literature as Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). However, UAS have so far had little presence in the field of civil applications, especially in Europe. Within the scope of this study, the potential civil areas of application of UAS were identified and critically examined from 2011 to 2012.

WISIND - The Security Indicator for Germany

The BIGS, together with the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), developed an economic indicator system to measure security and the security economy in Germany (WISIND) from 2012 to 2015. The aim of the project was to measure the security level in Germany by forming aggregated security indicators from the components subjective and objective threat.

Working Group on Risk Communication

From 2011 to 2013, the BIGS working group on risk communication had set itself the task of investigating, on the basis of the political objective of “developing a culture of risk communication" at the federal, state and local government levels, to what extent this objective has already been translated into concrete administrative action.