Ec3 NetWorks (Austria)

Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods that occurred in Aotearoa New Zealand demonstrated an urgent need for targeted strategies for building urban flood resilience. In a pilot study conducted between 2024-2025, we employed an anonymous cross-sectional survey and network analysis, to investigate the interrelationships between the perceptions of flood risk and urban neighbourhood flood resilience for selected residential suburbs in the city of Auckland, New Zealand. This study revealed that many associations monotonically connected perceived flood risk and perceived urban neighbourhood flood resilience, specifically, perception of safety from flooding, trust in local authorities, rainfall worry, distance from flooding source, perceived sufficiency in emergency response, and provision of assistance during flooding. Our study offers novel insights by linking urban residents’ perceived flood risk and perceived resilience, considering cognitive, behavioural, sociocultural or contextual, and geographic mediators using quantitative and qualitative analyses. Informed by these findings, we characterised a Flood Resilience Perception cluster, to inform future policymaking and implementation that is closely aligned with urban resident needs and expectations. This study is part of an ongoing project where we are investigating the transition from perception to action within the Auckland regional context prior to expansion on a national scale.

The detection of hazardous substances during emergencies is a critical yet dangerous task for first responders. Mobile sensing robots can reduce the risk. Nevertheless, field-ready deployable systems are rare. This paper presents an initiative to provide a deployable sniffer robot for hazardous substance detection. Special care is taken to ensure integration into fire service operations by providing standard operating procedures and eliminating dependency on GNSS or external communication infrastructure. Utilizing the off-the-shelf components for mobility and sensing, combined with onboard data processing, communication, and visualization, the system enables remote, real-time environmental monitoring. Initial field evaluations with Austrian firefighting units demonstrate promising results in mobility, usability, and operational effectiveness. The project aims to close the "Valley of Death" between research and real-world deployment through field-ready design, provision of training concepts, and realistic validation.

Civil protection can greatly benefit from well-considered extensive exercises. Evaluation of these exercises is essential for structured learning, development, and constant improvement, accountability, creation of knowledge, and providing information for decision makers. The INEGMA-E<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> project set out to develop more harmonized methodology for the data collection and analysis of civil protection exercises. Harmonized methodologies will enable more systematic comparisons over time and between exercises. Also, harmonized methodologies will better enable the automatization of evaluation data collection and analysis processes. The research material of this study has been compiled by structured literature review, expert interviews, workshop, and survey, all completed during spring 2022. The case study approach was deemed appropriate for the collection of quantitative and qualitative data from civil protection exercises by means of reading materials, observation, interviews and/or surveys coupled with respective analysis and reporting of results. Structured methods and standard operating procedures (SOP), coupled with evaluator training can help focus on evaluation appropriately on correct issues that are based on the aims and goals of the exercise. The contribution of this work is deeper understanding of how organizing according to exercise type and evaluation concept can help promote evaluation that can help build preparedness, performance, or collaboration. The case study approach and structured methodology provide an opportunity to collect quantitative evaluation data even from multiple exercises over time.

Social contacts and social support represent resources that contribute to resilience. However, the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated measures, including contact restrictions, posed challenges for young adults’ social networks, in particular for their friendships. Employing a mixed-method approach, we investigated the pandemic’s effects on friendships and their role in successfully navigating the crisis. We combined a qualitative approach based on narratives and in-depth interviews and a quantitative approach based on online surveys focusing on university students in Austria. Longitudinal data collections allowed investigating changes and developments as the pandemic progressed. Results indicate profound challenges for participants’ friendships and difficulties in both building new and maintaining existing friendships. This also impaired the provision of social support by friends, scattering participants’ social resources and diminishing their resilience rather than strengthening it. Altogether, the results of this longitudinal study suggest a lasting negative effect of the pandemic on friendships for students.

The WWW includes on various levels systems of signs, not all of which are standardized as necessary for a real Semantic Web and not all of which can be standardized. Linguistic theories can contribute not only to the thus needed translation between sign systems, be they natural language systems or otherwise structured systems of knowledge representation, but also, of course, to standardization efforts. Within the current EC3 research framework for x-commerce, linguistic theories will play their part as they provide modeling analogies and patterns for the construction of a central knowledge base.