Researchers Warn Buried Internet Cables at Risk as Sea Levels Rise

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Researchers Warn Buried Internet Cables at Risk as Sea Levels Rise

By CircleID Reporter
July 16, 2018, 7:48 pm PDT Views: 8,287 Comments: 1

The results of a study presented today at a meeting of internet network researchers depicts critical communications infrastructure could be submerged by rising seas in as soon as 15 years. The study, which only evaluated risk to infrastructure in the United States, was shared with academic and industry researchers at the Applied Networking Research Workshop, a meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Internet Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. “Most of the damage that’s going to be done in the next 100 years will be done sooner than later,” says Paul Barford, the study’s senior author, and a UW-Madison professor of computer science. The buried fiber optic cables, data centers, traffic exchanges and termination points that are the nerve centers, arteries and hubs of the vast global information network. “That surprised us. The expectation was that we’d have 50 years to plan for it. We don’t have 50 years.”

By CircleID Reporter

CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.

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Interesting! I alluded to this in my Katim Seringe Touray – Aug 15, 2018 5:20 PM

Interesting! I alluded to this in my Dec. 2015 article on what ICANN should do (if anything) about the prospect of a world in which global temperature has increased by 2 degree Celcius above the long-term average.

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