Autor: Ann-Kathrin Rohde

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the additional challenges that events face in terms of appropriate crowd management. This paper is dedicated analyzing these challenges and existing approaches for the safe operation of events during pandemics. Based on this, an innovative framework is presented that uses intelligent crowd analysis and is applicable to an environment with volatile groups. In addition, the specifiv use case of trade fair events is considered in this framework.

The food production process and raw material specific parameters significantly influence the quality of the final product. Furthermore, for products with several ingredients, complex parameter effects occur. This complexity causes the desire for a production control that considers these effects and orientates on final product quality. This article describes the state of the art and derives requirements form a case study in a delicatessen food production system. In summary, this paper presents a concept for production control with special consideration of the final product quality for the production of delicatessen salads.

The future energy concept from the German federal government declares that by 2050, the primary energy requirement should be reduced to 80 %. Achieving this goal requires many local implementations. At teaching and research facilities, a large number of rooms and other spaces are used temporarily. That use usually happens over a predetermined period. The observance of the specific usage period of teaching rooms, in particular of internal teaching rooms, was used to design and implement a future-oriented energy concept for a lecture room. The concept was created to show how technical building services could be used. This work describes our concept’s principle, methodology, and implementation. This concept can also be used for energy optimization in other teaching rooms.

The increase in transport volumes, the consolidation of the unloading ports and the influence of ship size developments pose particular challenges for the logistics processes and technologies to the landside connection of sea ports. In addition, skills shortages are a driving force in the search for automated containerized transportation systems (ACTS) that relief ports and their surrounding infrastructure and extend storage capacity. The technology-specific assessment of the impact of an ACTS on the infrastructures to be crossed is the subject of this article.

To develop solutions tailored to the challenges of logistics, it is necessary to realize the current state of the market as well as market trends. For this reason, BIBA has been conducting the RoboScan study series since 2007. It determines the status quo of applying robotics to logistics and instantly works out one specific area in greater detail. RoboScan’14 is now concerned with “man-machine interaction”. Some results of the study are presented in this article.

The complex and dynamic worldwide logistic systems are marked by the heavy dependence between the participants. Through this, local developments (especially in the economic sector) can entail unforeseeable consequences on the entire network. Furthermore, cyclical fluctuations occur at increasingly brief intervals. In times of an inconstant economic situation, the challenge arises to design processes with such flexibility or to construct the entire system in such a way, that unforeseeable market fluctuations can be reacted to in the best possible manner and that the system does not collapse. Only this can ensure the long term international competitiveness.