KLU Strengthens Research on a Crisis-Resilient Food Supply
How can Germany’s food supply chain remain functional if energy, IT, or logistics systems fail? Since the launch of the KRITIS-ENV research project in the spring of 2024, a team at Kühne Logistics University (KLU) led by Prof. Dr. Hanno Friedrich has been working on this question. What began as a project to improve cooperation between government agencies and companies in the food industry has since evolved into a broader research focus: Through KRITIS-ENV, the new FORTE project, and its collaboration with the Food Cluster Hamburg, KLU is bringing research, administration, and industry practice closer together.
Pandemics, war, potential gas or energy shortages, and disruptions in IT and logistics have shown just how vulnerable even well-functioning supply systems can be. Coordination between the government and the private sector is particularly crucial in the food sector: While the food supply is organized by the private sector, the government bears responsibility for supplying the population in the event of a crisis.
Better Decision-Making in Food Emergency Preparedness
In the KRITIS-ENV project, KLU is collaborating with the Lower Saxony Ministry of Food, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection and CALPANA to develop innovative cooperation and decision-making systems for food emergency preparedness. The goal is to improve the government’s ability to respond to potential disruptions in the food supply.
To this end, the project is developing, among other things, IT-supported communication platforms, decision-making tools, and information resources designed to facilitate communication between government agencies and companies. Right from the project’s launch, it became clear just how great the need for coordination is: 21 agencies at the federal, state, and local levels, as well as ten private companies—including Lidl, Edeka, and Bünting—had already joined KRITIS-ENV. Workshops and interviews with public and private stakeholders are helping to develop requirements based on real-world needs.
So-called “food landscapes” are a key component: They visualize the value chains of individual food products and highlight which actors, inputs, production steps, and interdependencies are relevant to the food supply. This allows vulnerabilities to be identified earlier and measures to be better planned in the event of a crisis.
“The government’s role is to coordinate and understand how the system works—but not to micromanage it,” says Prof. Dr. Hanno Friedrich, Associate Professor of Freight Transportation at KLU. “The government must enable the food industry to function—that is its role, not to produce food itself.”
FORTE Investigates Cascading Effects Between Critical Infrastructures
Launched in 2026, the FORTE project broadens the focus to include multiple critical infrastructures. In addition to food, it also examines energy, information technology, telecommunications, and transportation. FORTE investigates how disruptions in one sector can spill over into other areas.
An example from food production illustrates just how surprising such interdependencies can be: If chemical companies produce less caustic soda due to a gas shortage, this can also affect milk processing—since machines there are cleaned daily with caustic soda. Such cascading effects are often invisible as long as systems are functioning. In a crisis, however, they can become critical.
FORTE’s goal is to identify and model threat situations, dependencies, and cascade effects. This work will result in practical user tools that make crisis scenarios and decision-making situations more understandable for the private sector, government, and public administration.
Close Collaboration with the Food Cluster Hamburg
A current practical focus is the collaboration with the Food Cluster Hamburg. At a workshop held at KLU, the KRITIS-ENV and FORTE project teams engaged in discussions with companies from the food industry. The focus was on experiences with crises in food production as well as potential cascade effects between food, energy, IT, and logistics.
For KLU, this exchange with the Food Cluster Hamburg is particularly valuable because research findings can be reflected upon early on with companies along the food value chain and translated into concrete approaches for more resilient food emergency preparedness.
Growing Relevance for Businesses
This research comes at a time when the protection of critical infrastructure is receiving greater regulatory attention. Which companies in the food industry will be subject to the new KRITIS requirements in the future depends not only on their size. Another key factor is the role they play in the supply chain and the extent to which other actors depend on them. Even companies that supply key ingredients or intermediate products for staple foods can be critical to supply chains.
This is precisely where KLU’s Food Landscapes come into play. They help identify types of actors, highlight interdependencies, and provide a better understanding of vulnerabilities in the system. In this way, KRITIS-ENV and FORTE provide practical guidance for government agencies and companies that want to better assess their role in food security.
“Many critical companies don’t even realize that they are critical,” says Friedrich. Raising awareness is therefore a key step toward a more resilient food supply.
