The junior research group KONTIKAT is funded by the Federal Ministry for Research and Education and is part of the Ministry‘s program for „Civil Security Research“. The research group not only deals with the investigation of conditions for maintaining continuity in everyday life, but also in respect of crisis and disaster, (1) in the civil society and, (2) in the domain of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In doing so, we concentrate our investigations on regional studies, focusing on the city of Siegen and on the district of Siegen-Wittgenstein. The cynosure of our investigations is primarily on the aspects of individual and organizational concepts of continuity and normality, crisis, resilience and emergency preparedness. Accordingly, we try to answer our research questions with the help of our ongoing empirical studies (qualitative interviews and a large social survey about emergency preparedness), that ask about former experiences of the people with crisis in the region (such as longer failure of telecommunication and severe winter storms), if and what effects such experiences have had on their lives. We further explore on how do they keep themselves updated about recent crisis, and also their actual emergency preparation with stocking of food, water, emergency power etc. in order to be better prepared for future (prospective) disruptions.