We were delighted to welcome Markus Kraft to our institute last week! Over three exciting days, we had the opportunity to discuss our research projects, explore potential collaborations, and give him a tour of our laboratories. But we didn’t stop there - we also showed him the beautiful city of Hamburg.
Prof. Kraft is a leading expert in data-driven modeling, machine learning, and semantic web technologies. His groundbreaking work on The World Avatar aims to enhance urban resilience through dynamic knowledge graphs - an approach that has the potential to revolutionize how we predict and respond to extreme weather events.
It was a pleasure to exchange ideas with such an inspiring researcher.
The Future Lecture topic was The World Avatar:"Beyond Connected Digital Twins: The World Avatar - Building Resilient Cities" It took place on Wednesday, 29 January 2025, at 5:00 p.m. in Audimax 2.
In the words of Prof. Kraft: “In a world increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather events, The World Avatar (TWA) hopes to offer interoperable solutions to build urban resilience. TWA is a groundbreaking initiative that uses dynamic knowledge graphs to create a digital replica of our world – from molecules to cities and beyond. With TWA, we can model and test solutions for the most pressing challenges in managing complex systems, enabling both disaster planning and response to extreme weather events.”
In his lecture Prof. Kraft will focus on TWA’s ability to predict the impact of future flood scenarios by combining data from water, energy, and telecom industries. TWA addresses interoperability issues by bridging the gaps between individual data siloes, facilitating dynamic impact analyses that can determine how failures would propagate across networks. Beyond predicting impacts, TWA supports holistic disaster response through flood-avoiding route optimization, infrastructure accessibility assessment before and during floods, and critical path analysis. Additionally, TWA enhances long-term climate resilience through assessing economic and cultural impacts on cities due to sea-level rise.
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