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In light of the widespread power outage in Berlin, questions arise: How well is Hesse protected against a blackout? How secure is the critical infrastructure? Hessian Broadcasting (hr) sought answers to these questions in a report on the topic, speaking with experts from disaster relief and research. Michèle Knodt, deputy spokesperson of the LOEWE Center emergenCITY, director of the Digital Resilience Xchange application and transfer center, and professor of political science at TU Darmstadt, explains the guiding principle of resilience – that a city or society should be able to return to normality as quickly as possible in a crisis through preventative measures – but also points to the vulnerability of our highly technological society: "We cannot protect 100 percent of the infrastructure."

Prof. Knodt stated that failures of communication facilities and equipment are particularly critical.

To be prepared for precisely such outages, the scientists at emergenCITY are researching "resilient digital cities." In 2025, they were able to present the "Litfaßsäule 4.0", an energy-autonomous extension for advertising columns, as a prototype developed by the LOEWE Center emergenCITY, TU Darmstadt, and industry partners. The column can be controlled by emergency services and fed with information to quickly organize the flow of information among the population. This is an important component in being prepared for the event of a blackout.