The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) is the National Metrology Institute of Germany with scientific and technical service tasks. PTB measures with the highest accuracy and reliability and stands for progress and reliability in metrology for the benefit of society, trade and industry, and science. PTB was founded 1887 in Berlin on joint initiative of Werner von Siemens and Hermann von Helmholtz. Helmholtz was nominated the first president. A total of roughly 2000 employees work at PTB, 1500 of them on Braunschweig campus (facts about PTB).

Since 1949 PTB covers several aspects of explosion safety in three departments with a staff of approx. 80 employees. The subject area Physical Safety Engineering and Explosion Protection is one of 14 horizontal subject areas of metrology at PTB. Based on this background, PTB is a research institution, a test center (Notified Body under the EU ATEX-Directive; IECEx System) as well as a technical consultant for ministries and supervisory authorities. PTB employees support standardization at the national, Eupropean and international level as chair, convenors and experts, e.g. in IEC TC31 and its subgroups. PTB provides the open access CHEMSAFE Database for safety characteristics in explosion protection.

PTB performs fundamental and applied research associated with explosion phenomena and on industrial explosion hazards. To this end, PTB follows the approach to utilize experiments to obtain an in-depth insight in the underlying physical and chemical processes. Based on the measurements new numerical modelling strategies are developed. Finally, these models are implemented in highly-resolved fluid mechanical simulations. PTB works together with several universities in Germany. Here, many research projects related to industrial explosion hazards are investigated by several bachelor, master and PhD students.

Scientific partner and co-organizer of the conference is the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg.