One week in a Living Lab: MULTI-MAREX in Kalamata
From 11 to 18 September 2026, Kalamata – one of the living labs of the MULTI-MAREX joint project – served as the venue for a week that closely combined a scientific conference, student exchanges, living lab work, and fieldwork. The occasion was the 40th anniversary of the devastating earthquake of 13 September 1986.
The event kicked off on 11 September with the official press conference, moderated by Gina Marava. Representatives from the city joined Prof. Torsten Schlurmann (Leibniz University Hannover) and Prof. Klaus Reicherter (RWTH Aachen) from the MULTI-MAREX team to officially open the conference week.
“We are set to have a very intensive exchange of experiences with eyewitnesses – and indeed cultural events, alongside disaster relief exercises,” said Torsten Schlurmann, describing the programme for the coming days. Klaus Reicherter emphasised the warm welcome the city of Kalamata had extended to the project, as well as the large number of eyewitnesses and local stakeholders who were to be involved over the course of the week. Throughout the week, the focus was on direct exchange and collaborative work with local stakeholders.
On 12 September, the academic conference took place at the Kalamata Cultural Centre – a full day devoted to various geological hazards: seismic, volcanic and tsunami-related. A central question ran through the day: “How can risk management be implemented in practice for coastal regions such as Kalamata?”. The evening concluded with a public commemorative event at the Cultural Centre to mark the 40th anniversary of the earthquake.
The Student Conference followed on directly from the scientific conference, starting on 13 September. Here, the students had the opportunity to engage in “a direct exchange on natural hazards and disaster preparedness”, as Prof. Dr. Piero Bellanova (ICBM, University of Oldenburg) put it.
The conference featured a wide range of presentations by researchers from various institutions, as well as interactive workshops, such as the cross-mission session on ‘Living Labs vs. Real-World Laboratories: What’s the Difference, and How Do We Use Them in Participatory Research’, led by Kai de Graaf (SustainMare) and Dr. Felix Gross (mareXtreme). As a cross-mission format, the workshop helped to bring the focus of stakeholder interaction around the DAM’s real-world laboratory concepts more firmly into alignment.
The students then moved straight on to practical work and field trips: in hands-on practical sessions, they learnt about mapping methods – ranging from the surveying of sedimentary pollutants, through the mapping and scanning of buildings in Kalamata, to the laser scanning of urban infrastructure for virtual reality.
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