26.03.2024

Disaster Management between the State and the Economy

The study was conducted in 2022 and deals with the cooperation between companies and civil protection structures. It analyses the potential of corporate engagement and volunteering as well as the ability of state structures to organize and orchestrate it.

In 2022, Katharina Krause, Marco Krüger and Maira Schobert conducted a study for the General Secretariat of the German Red Cross on how companies and civil protection structures cooperated in coping with the Ahr flood.

The authors show the potential that lies in the structured involvement of companies. This potential is particularly in the spotlight of the disaster management discourse due to the German government's resilience strategy and the KRITIS umbrella law currently being negotiated.

The study highlights both the potential and the limits of corporate involvement, sheds light on the diversity of companies and shows that cooperation with companies has become essential in view of the large number of privately operated critical infrastructures.

The study is freely available online here (in German language only).