Incident Report Subject: Extreme Space Weather: Impacts on Engineered Systems and Infrastructure Date of Email report: Wed 27/02/2013 Report Detail:
Are YOU prepared? An extreme space weather event, or solar superstorm, is one of a number of potentially high impact, but low probability natural hazards. In response to a growing awareness in government, extreme space weather now features as an element of the UK National Risk Assessment. In identifying this hazard, the UK government benefitted from the country’s world class scientific expertise and from a number of earlier studies conducted in the US. However, the consequential impact on the UK’s engineering infrastructure - which includes the electricity grid, satellite technology and air passenger safety – has not previously been critically assessed. This report addresses that omission by bringing together a number of scientific and engineering domain experts to identify and analyse those impacts. I believe that this study, with its strong engineering focus, is the most extensive of its type to date. It is my hope that by acting on the recommendations in this report, stakeholders will progressively mitigate the impact of the inevitable solar superstorm. Professor Paul Cannon FREng Additional Documentation: |
