Global Vulnerability Assessment of Mobile Telecommunications Infrastructure to Climate Hazards using Crowdsourced Open Data

TL;DR

This paper presents a global assessment of mobile telecommunications infrastructure vulnerability to climate hazards using crowdsourced data, highlighting significant potential damages and emphasizing the importance of including telecom in climate risk analyses.

Contribution

It introduces a novel methodology for quantifying mobile infrastructure vulnerability to climate hazards at a global scale using open crowdsourced data.

Findings

2.26 million cells affected by tropical cyclones under high emissions scenario

USD 1.01 billion in direct damages from tropical cyclones

109.9 thousand cells affected by coastal flooding with USD 2.69 billion damages

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 currently 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.