Wolfgang Kröger


Wolfgang Kröger has been full professor of Safety Technology at the ETH Zurich since 1990 and director of the Laboratory of Safety Analysis simultaneously. Before being elected Founding Rector of International Risk Governance Council in 2003, he headed research in nuclear energy and safety at the Paul Scherrer Institut. After his retirement early 2011 he became the Executive Director of the newly established ETH Risk Center. He has both Swiss and German citizenship and lives in Kilchberg, Zürich. His seminal work lies in the general area of reliability, risk and vulnerability analysis of large-scale technical systems like nuclear power plants of different types and complex engineered networks like power supply systems, the latter coupled to other critical infrastructure and controlled by cyber-physical systems. He is known for his continuing efforts to advance related frameworks, methodology, and tools, to communicate results including uncertainties as well as for his successful endeavor in stimulating trans-disciplinary and trans-sectional cooperation to improve governance of emerging systemic risks. His contributions to shape and operationalize the concept of sustainability and - more recently - the concept of resilience are highly valued. Furthermore, he is in engaged in the evaluation of smart energy systems and future technologies, including new ways of exploiting nuclear energy, and heavily assisted vehicles.
Professor Kröger is an individual member of the Swiss Academy of Technical Science and heads the topical platform “Autonomous Mobility”; he has been awarded “Distinguished Affiliate Professor” by Technische Universität München in 2012., and "Senior Fellow" of IASS Potsdam. Inter alia he is member of the international review group of the Japanese Nuclear Safety Institute, the project of 'energy systems of the future', and notable advisory boards. Most recent publications/books are dedicated to the vulnerability of critical infrastructure systems and interdependencies among them and to make them more resilient.

Education and professional life

Wolfgang Kröger studied mechanical engineering, specialized on nuclear technology, at the RWTH Aachen University, completed his doctorate in 1974, also at RWTH Aachen, and his habilitation thesis in 1986, which focused on safety requirements for urban-sited nuclear power plants. He joined the Institute for Nuclear Safety Research at National Research Center Jülich, Germany, in 1974, led projects on underground siting of nuclear power plants, on application of PSA-methodology to HTGR and on the development of inherently safe reactors. He became deputy and finally acting director of that institute before he accepted the call to ETH Zurich and, simultaneously, became also research department head and member of the board of directors at Paul Scherrer Institute in 1990. In 2003 he gave up the position at PSI and served as Founding Rector of the IRGC. From mid 2011 to end of 2014 he was mandated founder executive director of the ETH Risk Center. At present he does research on more resilient socio-technical systems and, more sustainable energy technologies and smarter, more resilient grids, and works as advisor to scientific institutions.

Achievements

Scientific research

Wolfgang Kröger has published about 40 papers, books, and edited volumes only in the last 10 years. He is co-editor of three distinguished journals. His scientific research deals with basic methodology and practical applicability, low probability-high consequence risks and the question of acceptable/tolerable safety, all in relation to complicated single facilities including nuclear power plants and large-scale interconnected engineered systems. Four contributions are highlighted here:
  1. He has extended the methodology of probabilistic safety analysis for nuclear power plants by incorporation of passive safety systems and inherent safety properties in the "classical" framework driven by active safety systems. He helped to advance the exact quantification of logic trees with a myriad of basic events via binary decision diagrams and the modeling of human -system-interactions during accident scenarios by accident dynamic simulator and discrete dynamical event trees. His reflections of limitations of PSA, based on "lessons learned from Fukushima disaster", gained international recognition. More recently, a project has been started to complement PSA by precursor analysis based on simplified generic models and data and by making use of a comprehensive open database with roughly one thousand events which has been established.
  2. He has pioneered the modeling and simulation of complex, widely ramified critical infrastructure networks and their interdependencies, turning them into "systems-of-systems", e.g., by pervasive use of modern IC host technology. Based on advanced methods, partly developed in other sectors and adapted to technical systems, and all following holistic system thinking, reliable statements to their emergent complex behavior and their vulnerability can be made while a broadened spectrum of natural hazards and threats including technical and human failures as well as malicious attacks can be incorporated. The innovative methods include complex network theory, agent-based multilayer modeling in combination with Monte Carlo simulation and high level architecture. They have been cast into a new methodological framework, which allows for tailoring to the respective system specification and goals of the analysis. The work has supported the development of national strategies to better protect critical infrastructures and to reduce social vulnerabilities as well as the industry in building more robust networked systems.
  3. He has worked in the front line of efforts to analyze systems/options in the energy sector holistically under consideration of the total life cycle and by this he is able to provide more reliable input to the assessment of energy technologies and multi-criteria decision processes. He has been significantly involved in making the term "sustainability" operational by a set of representative quantifiable indicators for three dimensions of sustainability.
  4. He has deliberated on new needs and ways to exploit nuclear energy in a regime of self-controllability under accident conditions and eased burdens for waste disposal as well as less dependence on socio-political stability, all by innovative combination of key design factors. More stringent safety requirements have been elaborated and tested against candidate reactor and fuel cycle designs including SMRs.

    National and international cooperation

Wolfgang Kröger recognized early on that the classical technical risk analysis has to be enriched and modified to changing situations in our modern society. At an early stage far-reaching changes of the character of large risks to so-called systemic risks, triggered by an increasing integration and globalization of systems, became obvious and he realized the urgent need to develop new approaches to deal with such risks. Supported by the Swiss Government, he put the management of man-made technological trans-boundary risks into a broader context by establishing the International Risk Governance Council as an independent organization. Founded in 2003, the IRGC follows a trans-sectorial and multi-disciplinary approach and promotes multi-stakeholder participation, where appropriate. As its Founding Rector he has provided valuable contributions to its undeniable success to date. From mid-2011 to end of 2014 he helped to build up the ETH Risk Center, which pools the expertise of professors from various departments. Its joint research output should support society and industry to better manage risk portfolios and design novel solutions for collaborative risk reduction and resilience enhancing schemes. Furthermore, he accountably prepared the proposal for a huge integrated research project on Future Resilient Systems, integrating combinations from ETH and top Singaporean universities; it was finally approved by the National Research Foundation of Singapore for funding and launched in November 2014.. He temporarily joined the Institute of Advanced Sustainability Studies Potsdam as Senior Fellow to help framing the concept of resilience and systematic risks in 2018.

Books and selected publications

Selected books