Global Vulnerability Assessment of Mobile Telecommunication Infrastructure To Extreme Climate Hazard Events
CME Department Seminar
August 5, 2024
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM America/Chicago
Presenter: Edward Oughton, PhD, George Mason University
Location: ERF 1047
Abstract: The ongoing change in Earth's climate is causing an increase in the frequency and severity of climate-related hazards, for example, from coastal flooding, riverine flooding, and tropical cyclones. There is an urgent need to quantify the potential impacts of these events on infrastructure and users, especially for hitherto neglected infrastructure sectors, such as telecommunications, particularly given our increasing dependence on digital technologies. In this analysis a global assessment is undertaken, quantifying the number of mobile cells vulnerable to climate hazards using open crowdsourced data equating to 7.6 million 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G assets. For a 0.01% annual probability event under a high emissions scenario (RCP8.5), the number of affected cells is estimated at 2.26 million for tropical cyclones, equating to USD 1.01 billion in direct damage (an increase against the historical baseline of 14% and 44%, respectively). Equally, for coastal flooding the number of potentially affected cells for an event with a 0.01% annual probability under RCP8.5 is 109.9 thousand, equating to direct damage costs of USD 2.69 billion (an increase against the baseline of 70% and 78%, respectively). The findings demonstrate the need for risk analysts to include mobile communications (and telecommunications more broadly) in future critical national infrastructure assessments. Indeed, this paper contributes a proven assessment methodology to the literature for use in future research for assessing this critical infrastructure sector.
Speaker Bio: Edward Oughton is an assistant professor in Geography and Geoinformation Science at George Mason University. His research focuses on the modeling and simulation of critical infrastructure systems, especially telecommunication and electricity networks. Recent research develops novel risk analysis methods to understand vulnerabilities relating to a variety of threats, including climate hazards, space hazards and cyber-attacks. Edward has projects modeling critical infrastructure for organizations including the National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Space Communication and Navigation program, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Cisco, Meta (Facebook) Connectivity Lab, Canadian Space Agency, Airbus, Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, HM Treasury’s National Infrastructure Commission, UK Department for Transport and UK Met Office. Oughton holds an MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge and completed post-doctoral research at the Cambridge Judge Business School Centre for Risk Studies. Prior to GMU he was a senior research associate at the University of Oxford where he retains an honorary position at the Environmental Change Institute. Edward is also an honorary fellow of the British Antarctic Survey as part of the Space Weather and Atmosphere group.
Date posted
Jul 30, 2024
Date updated
Jul 30, 2024