30.01.2015: Quickly translating research findings into applications and thereby contributing to economic and social benefits – that is the goal of the funding program “Helmholtz-Enterprise“. Three new spin-offs from Helmholtz Centers have been recently approved for funding with up to 260,000€ of seed capital being awarded to the founders. Half of the amount comes from the Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association, the other half is covered by the respective Helmholtz Centers. At the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ, the TRIDEC Cloud platform is being funded.

The novel platform designed by the start-up team at the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam – GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences allows the aggregation of scientific data and models, e.g. for weather- and disaster forecasts, with algorithms and resources from their customers. The cloud service can be tailored to customer needs and serves three main market sectors. The first sector includes reinsurance companies and their clients. Here the platform facilitates risk and damage susceptibility assessment as well as disaster analysis for natural hazards. With this, reinsurance companies can offer improved preventive measures and support emergency preparedness and response procedures for their clients. The second branch of business addresses scientists, as well as scientific customers from other areas, that seek access to scientific algorithms and data for individual computations, e.g., for tsunami and earthquake research. The third branch addresses the early warning and disaster management of natural hazards. The new cloud-based platform can be adapted to connect independently developed early warning systems and group them into one uniform system thereby improving disaster management at national and international level throughout the entire early warning chain.

Link to platform: http://trideccloud.gfz-potsdam.de/

Contact: Prof. Dr Joachim Wächter