Climate protection, the path to a sustainable energy industry and the digitalization of logistics and mobility were key topics at this year’s Hannover Messe. After two years of coronavirus-related restrictions, exhibitors and visitors were able to attend the event in person again for the first time. Influenced by the Ukraine war and the associated challenges for the energy supply and the associated realignment of the energy mix, as well as against the backdrop of advancing climate change, the exhibition focused primarily on solutions in the field of hydrogen technology and largely decarbonized mobility in the future. But how can such innovations and ideas be applied in practice and, above all, successfully implemented in the local regions? And what contribution can modern and powerful 5G mobile networks make in this context? These questions were addressed on 31 May 2022 at the fifth Lower Saxony 5G User Conference, which was organized by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labour, Transport and Digitalization as part of the Hannover Messe and was intended to provide answers in the form of use cases and exemplary cases. In his keynote speech, Lower Saxony’s State Secretary for Digitalization Stefan Muhle emphasized that rural areas in particular should not be cut off from advancing developments. Therefore, the focus could not be solely on smart cities, but special attention must also be paid to the development of smart regions in order to do justice to the digital participation of all citizens. Innovation, sustainability and participation, also and primarily for rural areas, were also central cornerstones of the projects presented afterwards, which enable the testing of new 5G applications under real conditions in rural areas as part of the 5G innovation program of the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (BMDV). The speakers reported not only on the use of 5G-controlled rescue drones, which in the event of an emergency can autonomously and promptly reach the scene of an accident and send high-resolution images to the rescue control center via broadband 5G mobile communications technology in order to provide the best possible assistance when they arrive at the scene of the accident. Autonomous and emission-free rail travel, supported and remotely controlled via 5G, is another aspect of the 5G real-world laboratory of the Braunschweig-Wolfsburg mobility region. 5G applications for agriculture and forestry to strengthen rural areas are the subject of the 5G Smart Country project initiated by the district of Wolfenbüttel. In two sub-projects focusing on Smart Farming and Smart Forestry, the aim is to strengthen and increase sustainable agriculture and forestry with the possibilities of 5G in order to simplify production processes on the one hand, but in particular also to preserve the structures of rural areas in a sustainable and future-oriented manner despite intensive use. To this end, data records are sent to a cloud via the 5G network using sensors in two test fields, on the basis of which digital twins are to directly determine the effects of yield and process optimization on flora and fauna in various usage scenarios. In contrast, 5GAPS describes the digital twin of an entire city.
Under the motto “Hannover in Cube Land”, first the exhibition grounds and later the entire city, under the leadership of the L3S Research Centre at Leibnitz University Hannover, will be divided into clusters of different sizes in order to create real-time data analyses of the actual and target status of the units via the 5G network with the aim of improving and optimizing the quality of life. Based on the selected examples, the event impressively demonstrated that regional development and digitalization can be designed hand in hand in a targeted manner. After all, a well-functioning infrastructure is crucial for the development of a region. Today, demands on this infrastructure must be considered across a range of topics: concepts for digitalization, education, mobility and the supply of energy are a key factor for regional development not only in metropolitan areas, but also in rural areas in particular.