DIGITAL RISK
within hours, making a meltdown inevitable within days. But it would take several weeks to assess the full scale of the disaster because so much digital sensor data had been scrambled or delayed. The lessons were clear: When digital infrastructure fails, governments and other actors can quickly lose all capacity to evaluate damage, coordinate responses and broadcast guidance – in ways that magnify the initial disaster. According to the authors, around 90 percent of digital service disruptions caused by natural disasters result not from direct physical damage but from secondary ripple effects: “The number of people ultimately affected is estimated to be up to 10 times higher than those exposed to the initial event.” In the days and weeks following the disaster, more than 150,000 people were evacuated from the area around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. Many were relocated multiple times, as radiation assessments and evacuation zones were repeatedly revised based on limited information. Ultimately, more than 1,000 evacuees were officially recognized as “disaster-related deaths,” based on the physical and mental toll of long-term displacement.
connectivity, but it would ultimately take five weeks for a specialist ship to travel almost 5,000 km from Papua New Guinea and complete the necessary repairs. In some ways the world got lucky, say the authors: “Had the same cable geography applied to a major routing hub, a choke point where dozens of systems converge, the outage would not have been a footnote of a volcanic eruption. It would have been a financial and logistical crisis measured in continents.” Entire cloud-based systems could have been knocked offline; multiple hospitals could have lost access to their patient data; financial clearing could have been suspended; and port operations could have slowed by more than half, according to some estimates.
telecommunications and emergency management. The final word is a simple plea to turn these warnings into concrete “action” before the next Black Swan arrives at our shores, threatening millions of lives and trillions of dollars – perhaps on the back of the next El Niño, set for later this year.
Why we need to understand systemic interplay
Power supply disturbances
The report goes on to highlight the links between so-called intentional and non-intentional risks. In other words, how natural disasters expose vulnerabilities that are then exploited by malicious actors; or by contrast, where cyberattacks set off cascading failures in the physical world – in nuclear power stations, for example. While each dimension demands attention in its own right, it is their interplay that presents a systemic threat. The authors note how: “A heatwave may coincide with high electricity demand. A cable cut may occur while networks are already under strain. In such situations, failures do not stay confined to one system or sector. They spread.” The report concludes with a series of recommendations, calling on governments to clarify legal definitions, establish incentives for preparedness and boost coordination on satellites, space weather, submarine cables and data centers. One key task is to reinforce analogue fallback capacity by investing in training and scenario planning in key sectors such as energy, finance,
Why the Global South struggles to prepare
If rich countries can be overwhelmed on so many levels, from emergency response to public information, how can the world’s poorest countries be expected to manage similar disasters? Take Tonga, for example, a small island developing state of 100,000 people in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, whose main connection to the internet lies via a single submarine cable stretching over 800 km from “nearby” Fiji. In January 2022, an underwater volcano erupted off the coast of the Tongan capital, Nuku’alofa – and promptly severed that cable. Satellite links provided some limited backup
Data center overheating and cooling system failures
Submarine cable damage
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