ISAR Germany and the German Aerospace Centre are continuing their collaboration. Both sides extended their cooperation agreement on 6 May. ISAR Chairwoman Dr Daniela Lesmeister and DLR Programme Coordinator for Security and Defence Research Dr Dirk Zimper signed the agreement at the office in Kleve. ISAR and DLR have been cooperating since 2016 in the field of civil security technologies, especially in the area of technologies for crisis and disaster management.
The cooperation is a classic win-win situation: ISAR Germany benefits from the provision of state-of-the-art high technology, while DLR researchers are given the opportunity to test their technologies in a real operational environment and thus gain crucial insights into the actual functionality and user-friendliness of the technologies developed. „The cooperation with ISAR is a flagship for our research approach in civil security research at DLR, to develop technologies for and preferably directly together with the user. This is the only way to ensure that what we do here day in, day out actually brings significant added value for the user in the end.“
In practice, the cooperation takes the form of DLR employees being released from their duties for joint exercises, as well as specific assistance missions. Most recently, employees from the Centre for Satellite Based Crisis Information (ZKI) and the DLR Institute of Optical Sensor Systems (OS) supported the ISAR mission in Lebanon after the 2020 explosion disaster in the port of Beirut and the ISAR rescue operation during the flood disaster in the Ahr valley in summer 2021 in the area of situational awareness and assessment. „By working with ISAR, we have the opportunity to test our hardware in a real operational environment - you can't simulate these conditions in an exercise. That's extremely valuable for us. And then to know that we can provide support with our applications directly where they are most urgently needed - that is of course a huge motivation for us,“ says Ralf Berger, Head of Department at the OS Institute.
During the meeting, the two organisations also discussed the further development of cooperation in the field of crisis and disaster management. The partners also intend to make even better use of opportunities for mutual support in the national arena in the future and thus drive cooperation forward.
„We are very grateful for the good cooperation with DLR during our missions. They have significantly supported our exploration activities and we look forward to continuing this collaboration," explains ISAR Chairwoman Daniela Lesmeister.