How to protect digital infrastructure against climate threats

From the Arc­tic storm that blast­ed Texas in Feb­ru­ary to the 50ºC heat­wave that seared the Mediter­ranean all sum­mer, extreme mete­o­ro­log­i­cal events are unde­ni­ably grow­ing in both fre­quen­cy and inten­si­ty. 

The con­ver­sa­tion about tech­nol­o­gy and cli­mate has so far been dom­i­nat­ed by talk of car­bon foot­prints. We’ve heard much about the CO₂ emis­sions of data cen­tres and the fact that bit­coin min­ing requires more ener­gy each year than the total con­sumed by the whole of Argenti­na. Although extreme weath­er is becom­ing increas­ing­ly hard to ignore, what tends to be dis­cussed less in the ICT indus­try is that cli­mate-dri­ven events run both ways. 

In July, for instance, flood­ing after extreme rain­fall not only caused fatal­i­ties across Europe. It also brought down Germany’s three main mobile net­works, dis­abling more than 130 base sta­tions in the country’s west­ern states of North Rhine-West­phalia and Rhineland-Palati­nate.

Back in 2005, a hero­ic effort by a team led by spe­cial forces vet­er­an Michael Bar­nett to keep a data cen­tre oper­a­tional dur­ing and after Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na meant that New Orleans kept a line to the out­side world, even as cell tow­ers were being destroyed by wind and water. In that case, main­tain­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions was lit­er­al­ly a mat­ter of life and death. Tele­coms providers learnt sev­er­al key lessons from Kat­ri­na, with those affect­ed hav­ing since reduced their reliance on phys­i­cal loca­tions. Many play­ers now have their own cri­sis teams, for instance, which can be deployed to dis­as­ter zones to estab­lish emer­gency comms.

Nonethe­less, a report from the UN’s Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change in August about the extent of cli­mate risk sug­gests that poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing weath­er-relat­ed inci­dents will become ever more com­mon.

From an infra­struc­tur­al per­spec­tive, this is par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ry­ing because key sys­tems are so close­ly con­nect­ed, accord­ing to Chris Cartwright, chair of the dig­i­tal pan­el at the Insti­tu­tion of Engi­neer­ing and Tech­nol­o­gy.

“A pow­er out­age could bring down both a trans­port net­work and a com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem, for instance. It could also affect local hos­pi­tals and schools,” he explains. “This is the real con­cern: to what extent do you cre­ate inter­op­er­abil­i­ty, know­ing that a sin­gle point of fail­ure could knock out many ser­vices?”

Luis Neves is CEO of the Glob­al Enabling Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Ini­tia­tive (GESI), which works with multi­na­tion­al ICT firms and oth­er large organ­i­sa­tions to pro­vide impar­tial guid­ance and resources for “achiev­ing inte­grat­ed social and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty through ICT-enabled trans­for­ma­tion”. He believes that most busi­ness­es aren’t ade­quate­ly pre­pared for the cli­mate-relat­ed risks they face. 

Extreme weath­er events, Neves says, “are hap­pen­ing more fre­quent­ly, but they are unpre­dictable. We do not know when or where they will hap­pen. Even with one month’s notice, you can­not cre­ate the kind of infra­struc­ture nec­es­sary to avoid risk.”

In 2014, the GESI and the Inter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union pub­lished a joint assess­ment of cli­mate risks and sug­gest­ed sev­er­al mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures in a research report called Resilient Path­ways. They rec­om­mend­ed cre­at­ing redun­dant back­bone net­works for ser­vice areas that would be resilient to all extreme weath­er; relo­cat­ing cen­tral offices away from coastal areas and poten­tial future flood­plains; devel­op­ing alter­na­tive tele­coms tech­nolo­gies that promise to increase reli­a­bil­i­ty; and reassess­ing stan­dards and indus­try-wide reg­u­la­tion. Progress since then has been slow, accord­ing to Neves. To his knowl­edge, no one com­pa­ny has ticked all of these box­es.

Yet there is a grow­ing acknowl­edg­ment, giv­en the recent run of extreme weath­er events in Europe, that such mat­ters are over­due for con­sid­er­a­tion. At the end of July, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion pub­lished a “cli­mate-proof­ing” check­list for new infra­struc­ture projects, which needs to be fol­lowed by organ­i­sa­tions seek­ing a slice of the €17.5bn (£15bn) that the EU holds in its so-called just tran­si­tion fund for more sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. 

Anoth­er Euro­pean Com­mis­sion work in progress is the EU tax­on­o­my for sus­tain­able activ­i­ties. This clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tem will set out the con­di­tions that infra­struc­ture projects, among oth­er pro­grammes, will have to meet in order to be defined as sus­tain­able. Investors are keep­ing a close eye on this devel­op­ment, reports Raf­faele Del­la Croce, senior econ­o­mist at the Organ­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-Oper­a­tion and Devel­op­ment (OECD). 

The OECD is set to pub­lish its own infra­struc­ture report at the UN’s COP26 con­fer­ence on cli­mate change in Novem­ber. The doc­u­ment, which com­ple­ments G20 rec­om­men­da­tions on main­te­nance, will sug­gest that organ­i­sa­tions adopt a rad­i­cal new approach to cre­at­ing, main­tain­ing and oper­at­ing infra­struc­ture. Among oth­er things, this will entail cre­at­ing infra­struc­ture with end-to-end inte­gra­tion and using smart main­te­nance tech­niques to man­age poten­tial prob­lems proac­tive­ly. 

“For change to hap­pen, you need a shock. That’s what Covid has pro­vid­ed: a real­i­ty check on the way we do things,” Del­la Croce says. “Infra­struc­ture has not changed and clear­ly was not func­tion­ing, but now there’s a recog­ni­tion of hav­ing to catch up to face real­i­ty. The change needs to be rad­i­cal. If we’re only doing it at the mar­gins, it won’t be enough.”

Cara Labuschagne is senior ana­lyst for adap­ta­tion at the Cli­mate Change Com­mit­tee, an inde­pen­dent body that pub­lish­es a year­ly assess­ment of UK cli­mate risk. She notes that the nation­al adap­ta­tion pro­grammes of the UK’s devolved nations acknowl­edge the risks fac­ing the dig­i­tal sec­tor. But she adds: “In gen­er­al, there’s still a lack of evi­dence, cer­tain­ly in the pub­lic realm, of spe­cif­ic actions that are tak­ing place that will man­age cli­mate haz­ard risks.” 

The committee’s lat­est Inde­pen­dent Assess­ment of UK Cli­mate Risk report, pub­lished in June, notes that “alarm­ing­ly… the gap between the lev­el of risk we face and the lev­el of adap­ta­tion under way has widened. Adap­ta­tion action has failed to keep pace with the wors­en­ing real­i­ty.”

Labuschagne says: “We aren’t see­ing a plan or process to man­age the long-term risks. There’s a need for a set of resilience stan­dards for the ICT sec­tor cov­er­ing cli­mate change risks and adap­ta­tion actions. It would include require­ments for providers to assess their cli­mate risks under a region and to think about inter­de­pen­den­cies with oth­er crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, and the actions to take to reduce and mon­i­tor risk.”

Abhi­jit Sunil, ana­lyst for infra­struc­ture and oper­a­tions at the For­rester con­sul­tan­cy, says that he has heard very lit­tle from the ICT sec­tor address­ing cli­mate threats direct­ly, although sus­tain­abil­i­ty has become a con­sid­er­a­tion for many organ­i­sa­tions. But he adds that cli­mate pre­pared­ness and adap­ta­tion is like­ly to move up the industry’s agen­da after COP26. 

Some straight­for­ward oppor­tu­ni­ties exist for busi­ness lead­ers to make more sus­tain­able choic­es, says Sunil, sug­gest­ing that enter­pris­es asso­ciate sus­tain­abil­i­ty with effi­cien­cy by, for instance, sign­ing long-term ener­gy con­tracts with util­i­ty firms to cre­ate price cer­tain­ty. He adds that firms with many phys­i­cal assets should con­sid­er how their data cen­tres can be built around nat­ur­al cool­ing mech­a­nisms, or use machine learn­ing to opti­mise ener­gy con­sump­tion. 

To mit­i­gate risk, cloud com­put­ing com­pa­ny Pager­Du­ty has designed its sys­tems so that they are suf­fi­cient­ly dis­persed to enable a failover (the facil­i­ty to switch to back-up sys­tems with min­i­mal dis­rup­tion) to be test­ed and auto­mat­ed eas­i­ly, says its senior direc­tor of infra­struc­ture, Paula Thrash­er. The company’s engi­neer­ing func­tion is designed to ensure con­ti­nu­ity in the case of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. It isn’t tied to a spe­cif­ic data cen­tre or net­work point of pres­ence, so it can use its ‘work any­where’ prac­tice to its advan­tage.

All things con­sid­ered, cli­mate risk is becom­ing clear­er for busi­ness­es, investors and cus­tomers alike. And, while it would have been bet­ter to have devel­oped adap­ta­tion pro­grammes 10 or 20 years ago, things are at least head­ing in the right direc­tion, accord­ing to Del­la Croce. 

“It’s not the right speed. Progress should be faster, we all agree,” he says. “But it is def­i­nite­ly mov­ing.”